


Shining Bright Above You

by kototyph



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Clone Hijinks & Shenanigans, Crack and Angst, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Gently Canon Divergent, Jedi Domesticity, Late Clone Wars Setting, M/M, Majority Clone POV, Most of This Will Be Gen and G-Rated, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:08:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 21,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25700359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kototyph/pseuds/kototyph
Summary: A string of loosely-connected one-shots in the Prequel/Clone Wars timeline. OR: Cody is #done, Rex is resigned, Bly suffers a near-terminal case of UST/URT and Fox is planning to murder of all of them.
Relationships: CC-2224 | Cody/Obi-Wan Kenobi, CC-5052 | Bly/Aayla Secura, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 259
Kudos: 528
Collections: Fun/Humour/Crack in a Galaxy Far Far Away





	1. 1. Height

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Command Squad Chat](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21475132) by [writehandman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/writehandman/pseuds/writehandman). 
  * Inspired by [Baby Butcher](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24868513) by [BeanieBaby](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeanieBaby/pseuds/BeanieBaby). 
  * Inspired by [Shereshoy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24337255) by [SailorSol](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SailorSol/pseuds/SailorSol). 
  * Inspired by [It's Always on Taungsdays](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24319141) by [Project0506](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506). 



> This is a bit of a creative writing exercise, lol-- the fandom is new to me and I started two longer fics for it that have since lost momentum. I'm hoping a dailyish ficlet prompt will help get me in the groove to work on those!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CT-7567//REX: hey  
> CT-7567//REX: ct7567p_00567.jpg  
> CT-7567//REX: why the kark do they do this

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-specifc tags: chatfic, anachronistic file types, care and feeding of jedi, the CC-1000s are a bunch of bullies

**COMMAND CHAT (CTS WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT)**

**—————————————————————————-**

CT-7567//REX: hey  
CT-7567//REX: ct7567p_00567.jpg  
CT-7567//REX: why the kark do they do this

CC-6454//PONDS: i don’t have the data uplink for pics, we’re in the kriff-end of nowhere  
CC-6454//PONDS: why do they do what?

CT-7567//REX: skywalker’s been on top of the comm array for an hour  
CT-7567//REX: says he’s “””””fixing””””” it  
CT-7567//REX: it’s not broken and it’s ten meters straight up, wtk is he DOING

CC-2224//CODY: i’ve seen worse  
CC-2224//CODY: cc2224p_04567.jpg

CC-6454//PONDS: not all of us get the cushy missions on core routes, USE YOUR WORDS

CC-2224//CODY: we have to be careful moving the AT-ATs because sometimes kenobi’s on the roof  
CC-2224//CODY: boil snapped that pic the last time we had to stop mid-march and let him down

CC-1004//GREE: **@admin** we’ve got a ct leak again

CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: roger

CT-7567//REX: no wait!  
CT-7567//REX: ct7567p_00561.jpg  
CT-7567//REX: ct7567p_00562.jpg  
CT-7567//REX: ct7567p_00563.jpg

CC-2224//CODY: aww

CC-5052//BLY: awwwww

CC-1004//GREE: AWWWWWWWWWWWW

CC-3636//WOLFFE: koon’s going to love this, thanks vod’ika

CC-6454//PONDS: FOR FUCK’S SAKE

CT-7567//REX: :)

CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: that looks highly unsafe. banned

**_ADMIN has removed REX from the chat._ **

CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: **@cody** stop adding him  
CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: this is a cc safe space

CC-2224//CODY: oh come on  
CC-2224//CODY: he’s out there alone with skywalker and tano, he needs the moral support 

CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: him and ten thousand other vode  
CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: babysitting jetii does not automatically qualify a brother 

CC-6454//PONDS: **@admin** WHAT LOOKS UNSAFE  
CC-6454//PONDS: **@wolffe @bly @gree @cody  
**CC-6454//PONDS: KARK YOU GUYS

CC-3636//WOLFFE: dad says unblock rex, he wants more soka pics  
CC-3636//WOLFFE: **@ponds** she’s passed out in some kind of big tree with her mouth hanging open

CC-1004//GREE: dad

CC-3636//WOLFFE: cute as hell but damn, those teeth  
CC-3636//WOLFFE: shut up

CC-6454//PONDS: dad

CC-5052//BLY: dad

CC-1138//BACARA: dad??

CC-3201//MONNK: daddy plo

CC-1004//GREE: plo’s hoes

CC-1138//BACARA: oh, that dad lol

CC-3636//WOLFFE: you shabuire wish you served under general koon  
CC-3636//WOLFFE: but yeah he does it too  
CC-3636//WOLFFE: cc3636p_02967.jpg  
CC-3636//WOLFFE: rex is right, what’s up with that

CC-2224//CODY: i think they just like to be tall

CC-6454//PONDS: i’m signing off  
CC-6454//PONDS: not like i can participate in this conversation

CC-3636//WOLFFE: don’t pout  
CC-3636//WOLFFE: it’s a pic of general koon meditating on our shuttle nose   
CC-3636//WOLFFE: happens every time we’re dirtside

CC-5052//BLY: that’s how he meditates?? lame  
CC-5052//BLY: cc5052p_99991.jpg  
CC-5052//BLY: feast your eyes on THIS

CC-3636//WOLFFE: **@admin** please??? general koon’s giving me tooka eyes

CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: i know for a fact you can’t see his eyes through that mask

CC-3636//WOLFFE: it’s all in the bony ridges around the goggles  
CC-3636//WOLFFE: also **@bly** get that softcore shit off my HUD, what IS that

CC-5052//BLY: sunrise meditation, arch pose ❤

CC-2224//CODY: is balancing on a rock stack really necessary

CC-3636//WOLFFE: is doing it in her underwear really necessary

CC-5052//BLY: that’s her uniform  
CC-5052//BLY: she says it helps her feel the living force ❤❤❤

CC-6454//PONDS: i mean this sincerely from the bottom of my heart  
CC-6454//PONDS: fuck  
CC-6454//PONDS: you

**_PONDS has left the chat._ **

CC-1004//GREE: pondsy no :(

CC-3201//MONNK: **@bly** i see your cheesecake and raise you beefcake  
CC-3201//MONNK: cc3201p_00167.jpg  
CC-3201//MONNK: but for buir’s sake, you creep, clear out your photo cache

CC-5052//BLY: can’t, they’re all so perfect

CC-3201//MONNK: i am deeply deeply embarrassed to share your dna

**_ADMIN has added PONDS to the chat._ **

CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: if i have to bear witness to this idiocy on a daily basis, so do you

**_ADMIN has added REX to the chat._ **

CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: you have one shot, vod  
CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: impress me

CT-7567//REX: HE FELL  
CT-7567//REX: HE HIT COMMANDER TANO’S TREE AND THEY BOTH FELL  
CT-7567//REX: I CAUGHT THE COMMANDER BUT THE GENERAL HIT EVERY BRANCH ON THE WAY DOWN AND LANDED ON HIS FACE  
CT-7567//REX: ct7567p_00568.mp4  
CT-7567//REX: ct7567p_00569.jpg  
CT-7567//REX: ct7567p_00570.jpg  
CT-7567//REX: **@cody @cody @cody @cody** LOOK AT HIM

CC-2224//CODY: karking priceless  
CC-2224//CODY: forwarding

CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: … alright, you can stay  
CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: any other footage you might have of skywalker eating dirt will go towards insurance for the next time you piss me off

CT-7567//REX: sir yes sir

CC-5052//BLY: weird fetish but okay :\

CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: i accept absolutely no criticism from a vod with a full hardrive of photos like THAT

CC-2224//CODY: general kenobi can swear in mando’a, rodian, naboo, AND huttese, fysa  
CC-2224//CODY: also **@monnk** what in the six hells is general fisto riding??? some kind of furry saberjaw?

CC-3201//MONNK: i don’t know but now they’re friends ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	2. 2. Drinks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We got the moon, didn’t we?” Gregor mutters.
> 
> “I believe they were hoping we’d keep it intact through acquisition,” Kenobi says lightly, and takes the seat at the head of the table.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-specific tags: Alcohol, Obi-Wan's no good very bad life, all conference rooms share the same liminal space with a pile of busted equipment in the corner

Captain Gregor is staring at him. His whole command team is staring at him, actually, most of them still liberally smeared with bog muck and droid transmission fluid. There’s a dent in Hardup’s chestplate that looks like it smarts, and Barlex has his split bucket in his hands, blood dried to a brown crust in his hairline. Cody tries to convey through his posture that he doesn’t karking care how they feel or what the cadet rules are for cuy'val dar that don’t show up to class, they’re all stuck in here with him until the general comes to debrief. However long it might be.

Barlex is the first to speak, probably because the concussion has impaired his critical thinking skills. “Sir—” 

“No.”

“But he’s—”

The door hydraulics start to cycle and buckets turn in unison towards the SCIF entrance. “Fucking finally,” someone mutters. It may or may not be multiple someones. One of the someones might be Cody.

The solid durasteel door bangs open the second the heavy locks have disengaged and General Kenobi strides into the room, Butcher hot on his heels. The baby-faced medic is trying to get a bacta patch on a cut across Kenobi's cheek while the man bats him away, but then his eyes land on Barlex and he audibly growls.

“I do apologize for the delay,” Kenobi says as Butcher goes for Barlex like an opee scenting blood. The door reseals itself behind them. “The Council was rather unimpressed with our performance on this charge.”

“We got the moon, didn’t we?” Gregor mutters.

“I believe they were hoping we’d keep it intact through acquisition,” Kenobi says lightly, and takes the seat at the head of the table. Half his hair and beard are stiff with drying mud, which flakes off onto the carpet and durasteel as he settles. He braces his elbows on the tabletop, and his head gently sags to rest on his steepled fingers. “Now, then.”

They wait for him to say more, but Kenobi just sits there. Cody thinks his eyes might be closed. 

“Sir?” he ventures after a handful of seconds. Butcher is doing field triage right there in the SCIF, moving on from Barlex to Crys' maybe-fractured arm.

Kenobi suddenly holds up a hand and with a rattle, something shoots out of the miscellaneous equipment pile in the corner and smacks into his open palm. It nearly clips Gregor’s ear in transit, and the captain belatedly ducks. Kenobi sets the object down on the table in front of him; it’s a scratched-up, dusty cup from the mess hall, a mysterious brown residue coating the bottom.

“Gentlemen,” their general says in his cut-crystal Coruscanti Basic. “We have all had a very long and very terrible day, but as your superior officer let me assure you I will have the longest and most terrible. In light of that inescapable reality, I am going to open my eyes in one minute and when I do, there _will_ be some form of alcohol in this cup— and I truly, sincerely do not care from where or which of you it comes.”

And Boil and Waxer had gone to so much trouble to hide the still in the maintenance levels. Cody shares an appraising look with vode around the table, and they reach into chest pieces, thigh armor, and utility belts as one.

Sixty seconds later, Kenobi’s hands fall to the table and he raises a sardonic eyebrow at the puddle surrounding his overflowing cup. The generous portion is a little because the 212th to a man love their Jedi, and a lot because Cody serves with a bunch of assholes who want to see what Kenobi does with it all. Even Barlex can't drink that much trooper 'shine in one sitting.

“My deepest thanks. To your health," Kenobi says, toasting them with only minimal sloshing, and chugs the entire thing.

Butcher scowls and the rest of them blanch; Cody's stomach roils just from the visual. Nobody really knows what Boil puts in that stuff, but they do know it doubles as paint stripper in the armory and solvent for corrosive engine buildup, and that's enough.

Kenobi only sighs in satisfaction and sets the cup aside, wiping his mouth on his arm and leaving a long streak of rehydrated dirt across his face. “And now we may debrief,” he says primly. “Commander?”

“... yessir,” Cody replies, and pulls up the system map.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The 212st’s medic Butcher is borrowed from BeanieBaby’s [Senator Kenobi ‘verse](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24868513).
> 
> A SCIF is a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, aka a very warm and stuffy box where people go to share body odor and secret info; most military and diplomatic installations have them.
> 
> The [cuy'val dar](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Cuy%27val_Dar) were the people who trained the clones on Kamino.


	3. 3. Snow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "What? No, I’m f-fine,” he insists. “I’m not cold!”
> 
> “Sir, please just shut up,” Rex says tiredly, and goes for the tackle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-specific tags: Anakin Skywalker is a child, cuddling for warmth

“I am _fine_ ,” General Skywalker whispers— snaps, really, his eyes an angry glint in the darkness between the edge of his hood and the collar he’s drawn up over his chin.

“I only asked if you wanted any of my caf, Master,” Commander Tano whispers back, a bit reproachfully. 

“I don’t want _caf,_ Snips,” Skywalker grumbles, shuffling around. He keeps trying to wrap his robe more tightly around his body, but he’s lying on half of it and the woolen fibers are gathering heavy wet clumps of snow. He’s clenching his jaw so hard to stop his teeth from chattering that Rex is getting a tension headache by proximity alone. “I want Jesse to get the d-damned generators up. I want to go back to the shuttles. I want the Council to admit they had f-faulty intel and let us leave this Force-forsaken iceball!”

Rex can hear every hissed word, not that he wants to; it’s his job to stick like a burr to their Jedi in the field, and they, he, and all of Torrent Company are stuck huddling at the bottom of a claustrophobically narrow maze of canvas-roofed trenches, dug through meters of hardpack snow to the permafrost below. More snow sleets down through the gaps in the canvas every time the wind picks up, which is often. Rex glances across the trench at the vod leaning on the opposite wall, so close their legs are touching; Echo, he thinks, but hard to tell in the planet’s perpetual twilight. The trooper tilts their helmet slowly to the left, as close to a laugh as they dare.

Skywalker turns his baleful stare on Rex, then, and Rex dutifully parrots, “No changes to orders given at 14:00 yesterday, sir.”

His comm squawks at that exact moment, like the Force laughing at him. His general actually grabs Rex’s arm and hauls it— and by extension Rex— over his knees and up to his face. “General Skywalker here, what’s our s-status? Over.”

_“Uh, hello sir. I’m not aware of a change in status. Is Captain Rex—?”_

“Speaking,” Rex says, pulling his arm out of Skywalker’s grasp. “Go ahead, trooper. Over.”

_“Sir, Lieutenant Jesse and the mechanics team made some progress we thought you should see, over.”_

Good. They can finally get some floodlights on the Separatist installation they’re supposed to be observing and overtaking— or if Skywalker is right, they can finally illuminate an empty ice plain devoid of anything interesting for klicks and klicks around. Either way, progress.

“Thanks. Tell him I should be back at basecamp in ten, over.”

Skywalker has folded himself back into a sulking heap of wet wool, arms wrapped around his knees. Commander Tano's swathed in about as many layers but through the scarf wound around her montrals her eyes are pleading. Rex makes a subtle handsign at maybe-Echo and the trooper moves smoothly into Rex’s vacated position, producing a pack of sabacc cards from his belt.

He steps over a lot of sprawled legs and sabacc games on his way to the tents; clearly, the men have picked up on their general’s lack of faith in their current mission and decided to make the most of their downtime. Rex can’t blame them, but he does smack a few helmets where he sees troopers getting too cozy. This war has a way of kicking them in the teeth when they least expect it. 

Jesse and the team are waiting at the flap of canvas serving as the entry point for their makeshift mechanic’s shop when Rex ducks inside. “Captain, thanks for coming— we think we have a solution,” he announces. 

The hulking power cells are just as cold and silent as the last time Rex saw them, two days ago. He gives Jesse a squint. “Yeah? Show me.”

Jesse holds up a shiny, rough-soldered chip with curls of shaved metal still clinging to the sides. It’s tiny, about the size of the first joint of his thumb. Rex looks at it, then at the massive generator next to them.

“You’re telling me this little thing is going to help our fuel and cold weather lubricant shortage, somehow?”

“Kark no,” Jesse says. “This little thing circumvents several dozen safety features in our armor’s interior circuitry to allow unchecked heat buildup in the outer shell.”

“... you’re going to have to continue that line of thought, lieutenant,” Rex says. “I’m not tracking.”

“Jedi robes don’t come with onboard heating and he’s a skinny shabuir from some Hutt space desert planet to boot,” Jesse says. “It is the sincere recommendation of this unit that you pop this in your chestplate and take one for the team, captain.” Behind him, a handful of troopers nod emphatically.

“My chestpl—? Oh, kark that,” Rex says. “Absolutely not.”

Jesse doesn’t bat an eye. “Takes three seconds to install. In and out.”

“ _No,_ lieutenant.”

“Do you seriously think we’re getting off this frozen hellhole with anything more than frostbite if General Skywalker doesn’t actually start concentrating?”

There’s a point there, but Rex already spends too many of his waking hours catering to Skywalker’s crazy ideas. “Jesse—” 

“And think about Commander Tano!” the trooper says, going for the carotid. “She’s tiny. She’s got to be freezing too, don’t you think? She’s been back here for trooper caf twice in the last hour.”

Trooper caf is just boiling water, because sometimes that’s all you had at the ass end of the resupply line. Jesse shakes the chip at him for emphasis, and Rex eyes it with deep distrust. “Assuming I buy any of this banthashit— exactly how bad is this going to kark up my armor?”

“It’ll junk it,” Jesse says bluntly. “Fast. Two hours until irreversible damage to the components, five until it’s all slag. You’ll have to requisition a new set boot to bucket if we’re here longer.”

“You don’t think we’re going to be here longer?” It’s already been ten days. Rex can easily see it lasting ten more.

Jesse snorts. “I think that once the general is thinking with his upstairs brain instead of his frozen nads, he’ll be able to make a decision one way or the other.”

Rex closes his eyes, giddy visions of recycled ship air and gritty sonic showers dancing in his head. “Find three more volunteers to get their armor scrapped, and then we'll talk.”

“ _Thank_ you, sir,” Jesse says with a grin.

The worst part isn’t how quickly Jesse does get volunteers, or standing there shivering while his chest piece gets vivisected in front of him. It isn’t the walk of shame back through the gloomy trenches and the forest of vod who, thanks to Jesse’s company-wide announcement, know their captain is on his way to cuddle duty and greet him accordingly. It’s not the sweat building up under the heating armor, warm enough that if it wasn’t several notches below zero Rex imagines he’d be broiling like a rest day roast.

No, the worst part is definitely watching Commander Tano collapse against volunteers one and two with a happy sigh while he and volunteer three have to circle General Skywalker like loth-wolves on a wounded nerf, the man’s eyes darting from side to side like he’s thinking about making a run for it across the tundra.

“What? No, I’m f-fine,” he insists. “I’m not cold!”

“Sir, please just shut up,” Rex says tiredly, and goes for the tackle.

Later— safely and forcibly ensconced in Rex’s lap— Skywalker deduces the existence of and calculates the exact locations for twelve underground data servers via pure math and a hacked satellite so heavily shielded even _The Endurance_ array hadn’t spotted it from their almost-synchronous orbit. He then pulls out his communicator and delivers a precise set of instructions to all Torrent Company members currently on planet, as crisp and unambiguous as Rex could have ever wished, and ruins it with a surprise conference call to the 212th. 

“We should be back in the mid-rim in two days,” Skywalker says to the holo. Over General Kenobi’s shoulder, Cody’s expressionless bucket still somehow conveys that he will never, ever be letting Rex live this down.

 _“Wonderful news,”_ General Kenobi says brightly. _“I trust everything else is in order? Padawan? Captain Rex?”_

Ahsoka chirps, “Just fine!” from under her pile of troopers. Rex unwraps one arm from Skywalker’s midsection to give the SOS sign. 

“Everything’s going according to plan, Master,” Skywalker says, pushing Rex’s hand out of frame. He's heavy, his robes smell like wet bantha, and he keeps karking squirming; Rex is never volunteering to save his ass again. “We’ll see you soon?”

 _“I’ll look forward to it,”_ Kenobi says, a suspicious twinkle in his holographic eye. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trooper caf is, of course, a nod to Mark Watney's Martian coffee.


	4. 4. Lesson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> HALSEY_KNOX: I hear we have you to thank for this, **@tano_ahsoka**  
>  HALSEY_KNOX: sem1-2_spplmntls.pdf; sem3-4_spplmntls.pdf  
> 
> 
> DUME_CALEB: sithspit, it was you? SOKA WHAT THE KRIFF

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-specific tags: chatfic, anachronistic file formats, what exactly is the continuing education situation for padawan commanders

**PADAWAN LEARNERS FORUM  
** **THREAD: EDUCATIONAL ASSISTANCE  
** **NEW CHAT: SOKA WHY**

**———————————————————--**

HALSEY_KNOX: I hear we have you to thank for this, **@tano_ahsoka  
**HALSEY_KNOX: sem1-2_spplmntls.pdf; sem3-4_spplmntls.pdf

DUME_CALEB: sithspit, it was you? SOKA WHAT THE KRIFF

TANO_AHSOKA: NO, what  
TANO_AHSOKA: how is this my fault??????

HALSEY_KNOX: your master put in a petition to the council of first knowledge to continue our all our history and humanities coursework  
HALSEY_KNOX: WHILE WE’RE ON ACTIVE DUTY  
HALSEY_KNOX: because YOU asked him to and it’s SO IMPORTANT to him you get a FULL EDUCATION  
HALSEY_KNOX: master nu told me all about it when i came to download the mandatory holobooks :((((((((  
HALSEY_KNOX: it’s so many books, soka :((((((((((((((((((((

TANO_AHSOKA: that’s wrong and stupid, master skywalker couldn’t care less  
TANO_AHSOKA: he doesn’t READ

HALSEY_KNOX: no your other master! master kenobi

TANO_AHSOKA: he’s my GRANDMASTER, banthabreath, and i 

DUME_CALEB: ……. you……?

HALSEY_KNOX: TANO

TANO_AHSOKA: i may  
TANO_AHSOKA: have made   
TANO_AHSOKA: a SLIGHT error in judgement

DUME_CALEB: TANO NOOO

QUID_SAMMO: TANOOOOOOOOOOOO

TANO_AHSOKA: I JUST TOLD HIM I MISSED TALKING WITH HIM ABOUT OUR ASSIGNED READINGS  
TANO_AHSOKA: I DIDN’T MEAN I MISSED STUDYING, NO ONE RATIONAL WOULD HAVE TAKEN IT THAT WAY

UZUMA_TAI: DAMN IT SOKA

TANO_AHSOKA: DAMN IT MASTER KENOBI

OFFEE_BARRISS: There’s no need for swearing  
OFFEE_BARRISS: I think it’s right for them to keep our classes going as well as they can  
OFFEE_BARRISS: The war can’t last forever, and when it’s over, what are we going to do?

NAIRISSE_ATHONJO: yeah, just think about how far behind we are

VEBB_NAHDAR: Please remove me from this thread, children.  
VEBB_NAHDAR: I have better things to do than read through pages of notifications of you complaining about assignments

DUME_CALEB: you got knighted TWO MONTHS AGO, dar, shut the kark up

VEBB_NAHDAR: always classy, shrimp

OFFEE_BARRISS: **@vebb_nahdar** I hope everything’s going well on deployment!  
OFFEE_BARRISS: I think you need admin approval to be removed from the padawan learners forum, though

TANO_AHSOKA: yeah, you do  
TANO_AHSOKA: it's probably a droidadmin tho, there's hundreds of threads  
TANO_AHSOKA: **@admin** , please kick **@vebb_nahdar** off the board  
TANO_AHSOKA: reason: being a sheb

VEBB_NAHDAR: sounds like you're the sheb today, tano

NU_JOCASTA//ADMIN: Do your homework, padawans. And trust me when I say there will be plenty more where that came from.

TANO_AHSOKA: SORRY MASTER NU

VEBB_NAHDAR: SORRY

HALSEY_KNOX: SORRY 

DUME_CALEB: SORRY

UZUMA_TAI: SORRY MASTER

QUID_SAMMO: SORRY

TANO_AHSOKA: IT'S FINE I LOVE STUDYING I LOVE BOOKS  
TANO_AHSOKA: PLEASE DON’T TELL MASTER KENOBI I SAID THAT

 **_ADMIN has removed VEBB_NAHDAR_ ** _**from the chat.**_

NU_JOCASTA//ADMIN: A fine attitude, Padawan Tano. I look forward to reading your Linguistics essay next week, which I am sure Master Kenobi would be happy to discuss.  
NU_JOCASTA//ADMIN: :)

HALSEY_KNOX (PRIVATE): that's the scariest smiley i've ever seen in my life  
HALSEY_KNOX (PRIVATE): you're gonna die in seven days

TANO_AHSOKA (PRIVATE): SHUT UP KNOX

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Healer padawan Athonjo Nairisse is from the truly harrowing and beautiful [There Goes The Atmosphere](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3799492) by missmollyetc.


	5. 5. Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Decanting Day Cake**  
>  EQUIPMENT  
> 
> 
>   * organic material fire, burning until red coals appear (alt. acetate firepit turned to second-lowest setting; alt. electromag oven)
>   * 4 canteen cups for mixing and water rations
>   * 1-2 canteen spoons for mixing
>   * foil lining from prepack hypothermia blanket, folded into rectangular box 25 x 25 x 10 centimeters
> 


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-specific warnings: trooper recipe cards are TRAGIC

**Decanting Day Cake**

EQUIPMENT

  * organic material fire, burning until red coals appear (alt. acetate firepit turned to second-lowest setting; alt. electromag oven)
  * 4 canteen cups for mixing and water rations
  * 1-2 canteen spoons for mixing
  * foil lining from prepack hypothermia blanket, folded into rectangular box 25 x 25 x 10 centimeters



FOR THE CAKE

  * 2 standard-size unflavored ration bars, crumbled (alt. 4 pack treenuts blend, ground; alt. 2 canteen cups powdered cereal grain)
  * 1 pack powdered protein scramble, meat and veg substitutes removed
  * 6 caf sugar packets
  * 4 caf creamer packets
  * ½ canteen cup neutral-tasting oil (vegetable, fungal, animal*)
  * 1 canteen cup of water



FOR THE FROSTING

  * 1 pack choco drink mix
  * 2 caf sugar packet
  * about ½ canteen cup of water, added just until spreadable



FOR DECORATION

  * book of matches
  * 1 pack dry ration crackers



**DIRECTIONS:**

Cake: Mix all ingredients thoroughly until smooth; should be consistency of construction slurry. Pour a bit into foil box, making sure edges and shape are holding before pouring all. Wait until the fire is red coals and seal the foil box with excess foil, placing it in the coals for approximately 20 minutes**. Should be soft but spring back when touched. Let cool.

Frosting: In a canteen cup mix the cocoa powder, caf creamer, pack of sugar with some water in a clean canteen cup. Add the various powders as needed to make the icing as thick or thin, as you want. Mix them all together. When cake is cool, spread frosting in even layer over the top and sides.

Serve the cake on a plate of crackers to catch the drips. Place matches strike-side up in the frosting, as many as the vod has years, and light. 

** *NOT mineral **

** **for electromag, 7 minutes on half-power. DO NOT use foil in electromag; stiff or layered flimsiplast is best **

* * *

The sticky square presented to Plo has a fragile black stick sunk straight into the middle. Only close observation reveals it to be a storm match, long since burned down to the mottled brown surface of what his wolfpack has assured him is a rare delicacy among trooperkind.

“This looks absolutely delicious, Sergeant Comet,” he says to the erstwhile chef, who flushes with pleasure in the Force. Outwardly, the sergeant only nods, stone-faced. 

“I did the frosting,” Boost cuts in from across their small fire. “My batchmates always added caf creamer to the frosting, too, and I think it really makes a difference. Do you like it, sir?”

“Allow me a moment,  _ kurt’yah, _ ” Plo says gently, and Boost settles back with a look of keen anticipation and a bouncing knee. 

He takes a deep breath of filtered air and goes about disengaging the lower parts of his mask, pulling his mandibles from their sheathes and lifting the metal just enough to permit the small cube entry to his labrum. He closes the mask and masticates thoughtfully.

“What do you think, General?” Commander Wolffe asks. His cheeks already bulge with his share; as the decanted trooper for whom they have sung the customary songs and baked the proper foodstuff, he has been gifted the majority of the “cake” that emerged, smoking ominously, from the ruddy coals.

Plo does not experience many of the same flavors as his companions; of the seven basic tastes, he thinks, the Kel Dor and humans share only sweet. And it is so very sweet, with the mealy texture of freshly-steamed murpod thorax. “It reminds me of my favorite meal on Dorin. A very welcome treat.” Plo is aware that this favorite is one most sentients find off-putting, and so he does not name it. “Thank you for sharing it with me.” 

“And the frosting?” Boost says, leaning forward.

“A most excellent addition,” Plo answers warmly, trying and failing to clean it off his mandibles. “Now! I believe the time has come for the giving of gifts?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kel Dorian isn't a developed language in the EU or canon, unlike Mando'a. The RPG thread I read recommended making shit up, and so there is the word kurt’yah. It means pup. The Wolfpack does not know this :')
> 
> Recipe heavily adapted from an [MRE recipe site](https://www.ranker.com/list/the-best-field-mre-recipes/zxray).


	6. 6. Armor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It took too long, Bly,” his general says, a familiar look of durasteel determination in her eyes when he glances up from his reheated rations. “It can’t happen again. We need to fix this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-specific tags: the hets are at it again, simp rights

“It took too long, Bly,” his general says, a familiar look of durasteel determination in her eyes when he glances up from his rations. “It can’t happen again. We need to fix this.”

“Sir,” he says in automatic agreement. He doesn’t correct her on the dropped rank; he’s tried before, many times, but he has a horrible suspicion she knows exactly how much he likes it when she says his name, and when she tells him to call her Aayla— just Aayla. She hasn’t addressed him as just commander since their third mission together. “Ah. What can’t happen again?” 

It’s likely she means the failed battle plan, the overrun of their position and the unusually high casualties of the week. They’re back in the flagship, heading to the nearest GAR station for repairs and rest after twenty harrowing days and nights spent planetside, routing a Separatist takeover of strategic mining operations. Bly has a splinted leg and a new cut over his eye, which he’s secretly hoping will scar. It comes right down through the eyebrow, and he knows from Wolffe and Cody that kind of thing looks good on them. Aayla is unharmed except for superficial scraps and bruising, but she’d been on the front lines for the majority of the skirmishes. It could have been much worse. Of course she’s concerned.

“I need to know how to take off trooper armor as quickly as possible,” Aayla says earnestly, and Bly’s tidy, logical train of thought careens off into a flaming wreck of nonsense images.

His face stays totally blank; he knows it does, because otherwise he’d be dead twice over with the kind of miserable bastards he commands. Bastards like Lieutenant Galle, sitting at the table just behind Aayla, who does a ludicrous double-take before his face breaks into a rictus of evil glee. 

“I can certainly provide demonstrations with the spare armor in storage,” Bly says woodenly, and she nods over another bite from her own rations. 

Lucky had been the trooper closest to Aayla when the last and biggest of the bombs went off, and he’d been the one she went for once the threat was neutralized. She has minor healing abilities, she’s said; not enough to get her into the healing track of Jedi training, since she needs skin contact or something close, but enough for field medicine. She’d cracked Lucky’s armor like an egg right there on the battlefield to get at his wounds, causing a few new ones in the process, but they didn’t lose him. He’d been awake and talking by the time their medic had reached the front.

“Thank you, Bly,” she says after she swallows. “That would be extremely helpful. I’d also like some practice on a live body, if you have time?”

“Of course,” he says through grit teeth, deliberately not looking at Galle’s increasingly non-regulation handsigns. “I’d be happy to assist.”

“Tonight?” she asks, looking at her chronometer. “Nineteen hundred? I still need to report to the Council, and that could take some time.”

“Tonight,” Bly agrees with a sinking stomach, and she smiles at him, bright and grateful, before hopping up and taking her tray to the recycler.

 _“Commander,”_ Galle says rapturously.

“You say another word and it’s going in your court marshal paperwork verbatim, trooper,” Bly hisses, and shoves away from the table as well. He’s going to need all the time he can get to prepare himself for this.

* * *

He picks one of the smaller public salles; once Aayla arrives, a little more tired but still dimpling when she sees him, he locks the door and shades the windows. He _saw_ Galle dive for his communicator the second he’d stepped away and the last thing he wants is a bunch of horned-up vod falling over themselves to play field mannequin. This will be simple, and practical, and over as quickly as he can manage.

There’s also a not insignificant part of Bly that still, after all these months, harbors dreamy fantasies about his general being overcome by her unspoken feelings and pinning him to the mats with her mind to kiss him senseless. It has more decision-making power than he’ll ever admit outside of Fox's blessedly encrypted chat.

He drags a full suit of the Phase II armor up from resupply and walks her through the basics: start with the arms, gloves, bucket, then thigh and shin guards; boots come after, then the torso piece that goes from sternum to groin, then the lower back, then finally chest. Vice versa for putting them back on, but she doesn’t seem as interested in that.

She has a point about a living subject; inert pieces of armor do not a vod make and don’t link together like the real thing; no biofeedback or weight behind the plastoid. Bly still makes her unlatch, unscrew, and pry open a hundred invisible troopers before she turns to him and firmly says, “Now the practical, if you please.”

“Um,” Bly says, and then she’s fitting her hands around his left vambrace, slim blue fingers unerringly finding the seam that runs along the inside of his forearm, and pressing down on the catch. It comes away in her grip, and she gives a satisfied hum.

Bly isn't sure what she's sensing through the Force, but when she looks back at his bucket her brow quirks and she says, “Yes?”

“... yes,” Bly allows, ignoring the flutter in his chest, and holds out his other arm.

She takes her time, starting there: lower, upper, and then the slow unpeeling of his gloves. Bly hadn’t realized hands could be an erogenous zone, but then again, the sex education on Kamino was at best remedial and at worst criminally neglegent.

“These come off easier than the empty suit,” she observes, holding his left rerebrace. It’s the one with a pitted scar from a deflected energy weapon along the back, invisible until turned to the light. “Because they’re older?”

“More wear and tear,” he agrees. “We don’t actually sleep in our armor, or take it in the sonics.”

“I’ve seen the shoreleave holos, I know you don’t,” she says with a grin. 

Bly has a moment of stark existential terror that he has to swallow back before he can ask, “What— what shoreleave would that be, sir?”

“ _Aayla_ ,” she insists. “Hm. There were several drunk Wookies, does that narrow it down?”

“Oh,” he says faintly. He’s going to murder Bacara with his own two hands. “That one.”

“Aha!” she says, and pulls back with the right glove in her hand. “Now, torso piece?”

The torso piece is bad, the legs slightly better even with the splint, but the boots make him feel like a Hutt in a holoporn and he stops her before she can really start.

“Prone makes more sense in this case,” he says a little desperately, her hand warm on his knee through the blacks, eyes turned up to his with a curious expression. “You probably won’t be field-stripping a trooper that can still move under his own power.”

“Ah, right,” she says, and pats the mat at her side. “And your leg must hurt. Lie down for me then.”

Bly does, unable to make himself move any closer than half a mat away. She comes to him instead, settling with the press of her knee against his side, and gets back to work. 

Lying prone while she strips him is exponentially more terrible, her look of stern concentration as she slides fingers into every crease and catch in his armor at once gratifying and almost unbearable. He tries to subtly ease his legs apart to relieve some pressure, praying to the Force and any god that will have him she’s not actively reading his thoughts and won’t look down. 

He comes to the bleak realization he’s going to get hard every time he hears a clasp pop open as she frees up his chest piece, _click click click,_ then the pauldrons that attach to it. Damn it all to the six sith hells.

But before she pulls it all off, she goes for his helmet, and is smiling down at him when his face is revealed. 

“Hello there.”

Bly stares helplessly back. “Hello, sir.”

"Aayla," she reminds him. “Will you sit up for me? Ah, wait— if you’re unconscious or badly injured, you wouldn’t be able to. Lie still.”

The chest piece is lifted free, exposing the last bit of his blacks. She bends in close to coax the back piece out from under his weight, her body curled over his and sleek muscle bunching in her shoulders as she wrestles with it. 

It’s when she goes for the throat fastenings of his blacks that he finally loses all nerve, wit, and ability to pretend this isn’t simultaneously the best and worst thing that has ever happened to him. He uses both hands to clutch the halves closed over his chest and stutters, “Th-that’s not, I mean, the armor’s really the hardest part, let me up and we’ll start from the top...”

Aayla tilts her head back and laughs, lekku bouncing with the force of it. He flounders to a stop, watching her, then twitches with the suddenness as she plants a hand on the mats next to his ear and leans in close. Very close.

“Bly. You darling, stupid man,” she murmurs, breath warm on his face. “I don’t usually have to work this Force-damned hard, you know.”

“What?” he croaks. What?

“You're _lucky_ you’re so pretty,” she sighs, and brings her mouth down the last few centimeters to cover his.

He is, in fact, very quickly rendered senseless.


	7. 7. Red

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The projectile catches Kenobi right under his abbreviated chest plate, the most they’ve ever been able to bully him into, and Cody sees red even before the awful bloom of blood on pale tunics.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-specific tags: blood, injuries, minor character deaths offscreen, Cody has _feelings_ (he's just not sure which ones)

The projectile catches Kenobi right under his abbreviated chest plate, the most they’ve ever been able to bully him into, and Cody sees red even before the awful bloom of blood on pale tunics. Their general is a stubborn sheb and doesn’t go down right away, incinerating two, three more shots before he sinks to a knee. He shears a combat droid in half before he crumples completely, and then Cody’s visual is broken as unengaged troopers form a phalanx around him.

Cody doesn’t have time to check on him; the troopers will keep him safe as they can, and the droids are still coming thick and fast through what remains of this colony’s capital city. The company is now looking to him for orders, and Cody goes on to direct the rest of the battle alone. 

He doesn’t remember much of it, afterwards, but droids and Separatist fighters are piled in steaming, sparking heaps around him when the last droideka falls and the streets go quiet. Cody abandons his position the moment it does, running back through the shattered city to skid to a kneeling stop at their Jedi’s side, where a silently enraged Butcher is already cutting through the thick cloth to get at the entry wound. Kenobi is taking shallow, careful breaths, his eyes glazed and staring at the smoke-filled sky.

“Rather novel, don’t you think, commander?” he says, strained. His face is bone white, the spreading stain on his robes a vivid crimson. “I’ve a few lightsaber scars, and blaster burns aplenty, but a slug? This is a first.”

“Stop talking, sir,” Cody says, more for his own sake than his general’s. He knocks on the plastoid over Kenobi’s heart. “You are _never_ leaving quarters without a full set again, you hear me?”

“If I thought any of it would fit me, I’d put it on right now,” Kenobi laughs, and then coughs wetly. There’s blood on his teeth and something in Cody’s chest twists with painful viciousness.

“ _No_ laughing,” Butcher says.

“My sincere apologies,” Kenobi mumbles, eyes fluttering shut. “Oh, I think I might be sick.”

“ _Absolutely_ no vomiting,” Butcher snaps, and motions for the stretcher.

* * *

Later, Cody wakes to gentle prodding at his shoulder. Kenobi is smiling tiredly at him from the medbay cot, bacta bandages wound around his ribs and a small metal bullet in a glass container on the tray next to him.

“I must have looked a sight, to worry you so much,” he says. “But you should be sleeping in your bunk, commander.”

Cody sits up slowly, rubbing a rough hand over his bare face and feeling the sleep crusted in his eyes, the stubble coming in. He stares at Kenobi until the man’s face grows solemn, and says, “Don’t do it again, then.”

Unfair to ask of him, maybe. But Kenobi nods all the same.


	8. 8. Bacta

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Anything else for the group?” she asks him, a bit of General Kenobi in her dry tone. Rex knows from his own experience and Cody’s that for all his strengths as a tactician, Anakin Skywalker has never sat in a staff meeting he didn’t completely ignore, coopt, or sabotage. Sometimes a mixture of all three, depending on his mood.
> 
> “Nah,” Skywalker says genially, apparently choosing to ignore this one. “Take it away, Commander.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-specific tags: shipbound troopers make do

“And that… is all we have from High Command on general fleet movements for the next few days,” Tano says, thumbing back and forth through the data projected on the table in front of her. “For our part, we’re on course to rendezvous with _The Negotiator_ and the 212st in twenty-two hours, and will go on to the Rimma Trade Route together. Master Skywalker?”

“Hmm?” Skywalker looks up from his comm. 

“Anything else for the group?” she asks him, a bit of General Kenobi in her dry tone. Rex knows from his own experience and Cody’s that for all his strengths as a tactician, Anakin Skywalker has never sat in a staff meeting he didn’t completely ignore, coopt, or sabotage. Sometimes a mixture of all three, depending on his mood.

“Nah,” Skywalker says genially, apparently choosing to ignore this one. “Take it away, Commander.”

“Let’s start around the table, then,” Tano says, lips pursed. “Captain Rex?”

The 501st All Hands is a weekly waste of everyone’s precious free time when they’re shipside, and despite the name is mostly attended by just the command team and division heads— or all the sorry shebs that can’t get away with having actual work to do. Rex has never regretted his rank more than when he’s forced to sit and update a room full of people desperately wishing they were somewhere else on all of the non-events of the week.

He talks for the appropriate amount of time, and they go around the holotable— communications, maintenance, armory, kitchens. The med unit reps are on the far side of the room, so Rex has relaxed back in his chair and is thinking of surreptitiously checking his own comm when Kix slams a large jug of clear fluid on the table so hard the whole screen judders off and on. Skywalker jumps. Someone from artillery falls off their seat with a muffled curse.

“We have been shipside for a _week,_ ” the medic says, eyes blazing. Troopers to the left and right of him lean away. “Do you know how many liters of bacta we started out with?”

“I do not,” Tano says when no one else responds, with admirable evenness. “How many liters would that be?”

“Five hundred and seventy-two,” Kix says. “ _Point three._ Enough to refill two of the full-body tanks completely and treat approximately one hundred meters of bandaging. That’s already critically low for a ten-thousand-troop legion, but I _thought_ they were acceptable numbers for the two weeks it’s going to take to reach headquarters— especially if we’re headed away from the front lines and the worst I’m managing is accidental injury in the course of duty.

“But do you know how many liters of bacta we have now?” he asks the room. “Hm? Anyone?”

There are suddenly a lot of uncomfortable-looking vod in the room, and no one seems willing to look up and risk meeting anyone else’s eyes. Except for Skywalker, who’s looking at the jug, Kix, and assembled troopers with an expression of total bafflement. Maybe Jedi and their vaunted lack of attachments don’t have this kind of problem; given what Rex knows about basic biology and Skywalker’s own personal attachments, though, he doubts it.

“We have _one_. This one,” Kix says, jabbing a finger at the jug on the table. “The last untouched liter of bacta on the entire karking ship!”

Commander Tano’s eyebrows are rising towards her montrals, and even Skywalker’s eyes are slowly widening. 

“Which is now going under lock and key and my _personal_ supervision. Because unless someone’s— karking _organized an underground droid-fighting ring_ in the last five days and is taking hard casualties, you worthless di’kute apparently get on a ship going coreward and completely lose your minds! Can't even keep it in your codpiece long enough to get to—”

“Kix!” Skywalker squawks, lunging sideways at Tano. She yelps and throws up her arms in a defensive block, but he dodges them and ends up with both hands clapped to the sides of her face. “Little ears!”

Tano twists and tries to stomp on his instep, clawing at his grip. “I don’t _have_ ears, Master, let go—”

“Little montrals!” Skywalker insists, face red. 

“We’ll, ah, take care of this,” Rex says, standing quickly. “You can leave it to me.” Anything to get them out of the room.

“I just hope no one actually needs medical attention at any point in the next two weeks!” Kix says, standing too. “And that your sad lonely jerk-offs were worth it if they do and I have nothing for them!"

“Harsh, vod,” someone mutters.

“Aaand command out,” Skywalker says, catching his struggling padawan in a chokehold and dragging her towards the door. “Thanks, Rex, your show now, bye!”

_“Master, I will bite you—”_

“Meeting adjourned,” Rex sighs, rubbing at his temples. “Superiors, please tell your subordinates to return any unused… product to the medbay as soon as possible. No penalty.”

“I didn’t agree to that,” Kix says as the room bursts into motion, troopers rushing the exit in a show of abject cowardice.

“Do you want your bacta back or not?” Rex snaps, and Kix subsides with a mutinous scowl.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone who has ever worked in an office knows the deputy does all the work.
> 
> Like puns? Like Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan? Like the bacta-as-lube trope taken to the illogical and highly enjoyable extreme? _Please_ read [Pineapple](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7620844) and [Pineapple 2: Bacta in the Habit](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7672552) by scarletjedi.


	9. 9. Holiday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We still have time to stop this,” Fox is muttering to himself, pacing up and down in front of the giant, room-sized holoscreen that dominates the Guard bullpen.
> 
> The screen usually projects a map of Coruscant’s downtown, with markers for active investigations, ongoing protective details, and key offices and event spaces for patrol management. Right now it shows the ship movements and leave timetables for what looks like the entirety of the Grand Army of the Republic, plotted down to the hour. There’s a section of days where all the little lines seem to converge on Coruscant, outlined in the screaming red usually reserved for assassination attempts and terrorist threats.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-specific tags: alcohol, drunken clone shenanigans, RIP commander fox

**COMMAND CHAT (CTS WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT)**

**—————————————————————————-**

CC-3636//WOLFFE: hey, **@admin  
** CC-3636//WOLFFE: seps got our flagship pretty bad in the last dust-up, looks like we’re leaving the midrim earlier than planned  
CC-3636//WOLFFE: you going to have any time for me in about a week, or am I headed to 79’s alone?

CC-5052//BLY: when are you getting in?  
CC-5052//BLY: 321nd is about two days out from coruscant, supposed to be there a month or so while our destroyers cycle through maintenance

CC-3636//WOLFFE: nice  
CC-3636//WOLFFE: 22.05.10, looks like

CC-5052//BLY: very nice  
CC-5052//BLY: we can finally try out that togruta barbeque place on the liberica spine

CC-6454//PONDS: boys, you’re not going to believe this  
CC-6454//PONDS: cc6454p_00027.jpg  
CC-6454//PONDS: me/ **@bacara/@jet** have been cooling our heels here for ten days while mace and mundi fuck around on temple business  
CC-6454//PONDS: no timetable for redeployment, we could be here weeks  
CC-6454//PONDS: **@admin** has been hiding from us the whole time

CC-2224//CODY: you’re kidding me  
CC-2224//CODY: **@rex  
**CC-2224//CODY: the entire open circle fleet just crossed onto the hydian way going coreward for urgent resupply

CC-6454//PONDS: WHAT

CT-7567//REX: yeah, we’re supposed to hit the perlimian route in less than thirty-six hours, and from there it’s a straight shot to coruscant

CC-1004//GREE: okay okay okay  
CC-1004//GREE: OKAY  
CC-1004//GREE: general unduli said we might be headed back soon for debrief, i’ll see what I can do to speed that up  
CC-1004//GREE: sweet gods and dathomiri devils, please let this happen

CC-3201//MONNK: friends, brothers, troopers  
CC-3201//MONNK: general fisto just broke three of his bone-in limbs and we’re taking a small contingent back to the temple healers as fast as hyperlanes can move us

CC-3636//WOLFFE: oof  
CC-3636//WOLFFE: but also :D

CC-3201//MONNK: :D   
CC-3201//MONNK: but yeah vod he’s looking pretty rough

CC-5052//BLY: :D

CC-1004//GREE: :D (tbc)

CC-6454//PONDS: :D

CC-1138//BACARA: :D

CC-1993//JET: :D

CC-2224//CODY: :D

CT-7567//REX: :D

CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: D:

* * *

“We still have time to stop this,” Fox is muttering to himself, pacing up and down in front of the giant, room-sized holoscreen that dominates the Guard bullpen.

The screen usually projects a map of Coruscant’s downtown, with markers for active investigations, ongoing protective details, and key offices and event spaces for patrol management. Right now it shows the ship movements and leave timetables for what looks like the entirety of the Grand Army of the Republic, plotted down to the hour. There’s a section of days where all the little lines seem to converge on Coruscant, outlined in the screaming red usually reserved for assassination attempts and terrorist threats.

“I can probably convince the Council to redirect the Open Circle to Alderaan if I lowball our fuel stock numbers, and they’ll certainly deny any request from General Unduli once they see how choked for space we’ll be in general barracks. There has to be a mission General Mundi will take, I just need to find it, and that gets rid of two of the rat bastards. And for General Fisto— Coruscant can’t be the only planet they have Jedi healers—”

This is all probably top secret information that no one but GAR High Command should have in aggregate. Thorn does not mention this to his commander, because watching the vod’s slow motion emotional breakdown is much more entertaining than the casework currently on his desktop datascreen.

“It has to be against regulations somehow,” Fox says, eyes darting back and forth over the looping calendars. “Separatist spies are always looking for opportunities, and presenting this kind of target is just asking for trouble. Let alone the gaps it leaves in our— _what the kark do you think you’re doing?”_

Stone’s hand doesn’t move from his shoulder cam. “Thought Commander Trauma might want to know. Just for his own situational awareness.”

“Doom and Keeli, too,” Thire suggests from across the room. “Oh, and Fil.” Stone nods thoughtfully.

 _“Situational awa—_ delete it! Delete it immediately!”

“Whoops,” Stone says, hand falling to his desk interface. _Click._ “Looks like it's already uploaded. Sorry, commander.”

“Oh, you karking _will be,”_ Fox snarls as he advances on him, a deranged glint in his eye. 

“Oh, look at that. The twins are already on Hosnian Prime, should be just a quick daytrip for Doom—”

Unluckily for Thorn, who was hoping for a cage match or three before lunch, their commander’s comm choses then to jangle with an incoming call. When he looks down at the screen Fox actually smiles— Thorn didn’t know the sheb’s face bent that way. 

“Keep laughing, vod. We’ll see what the High General has to say about this!” he says, and stomps into his office. A moment later he tries to slam his door, but it catches on the frame and sticks there. The Coruscant Guard offices are not the most recently-renovated portions of the Senate complex.

“Is that the jetii who does the podracing circuit down in Gamma strata?” Stone asks, looking thoughtfully at the mostly-closed door. 

“No. You’re thinking Skywalker, he’s the High General’s pada-thing. Apprentice.”

“So. The jetii who trained the podracer, then,” Stone says, and they catch each other’s eyes and grin.

* * *

_“Commander, I must say I’m extremely impressed,”_ General Kenobi says, and try as he might Fox can’t detect an ounce of sarcasm. _“As is the Council. It’s an ongoing challenge for us to track all lines of effort for the GAR and correct potential conflicts, especially adding unpredictable supply cycles and leave accommodations. What you’ve created here is an invaluable and genuinely astonishing feat of organizational mapping.”_

 _“_ Thank you, sir,” Fox says. He’s been locked in his office for half an hour with Kenobi’s holo and the color-coded, four-dimensional Disaster Chart on full display, a multipage bulleted list of talking points on the ineligibilities of the situation spread across the desk. He’d covered them all at length, in detail, and Kenobi had nodded encouragingly at each one. It’s enough to buoy Fox’s mood to a level of cautious optimism he seldom enjoys. 

He’s quite proud of himself, actually; seeing it all laid out like this, it seems beyond impossible that anyone in High Command could allow something this obviously dangerous and riddled with liability. He might have saved himself and the whole damned planet-city after all. 

Kenobi’s holo-visage smiles at him, as if sensing his thoughts. _“As it happens, I’ve been trying for some time now to arrange an in-person debriefing session for Jedi participating in the war effort. Some things are too sensitive for holo, especially from Coruscant’s presumed-compromised deep space commlines. You’ve solved that problem for me quite neatly, after I’d all but given up on the idea, and for that you have my sincere gratitude.”_

“You—” Fox gapes at him, at the genuinely pleased look on his _dirty lying jetii face,_ and Kenobi folds his hands in front of him with an inquiring arch to his eyebrows. “But the— the threats to operations security alone are astronomical! I don’t have the manpower to cover—”

 _“I trust you and the Guard to mitigate threats as much as you are able,”_ Kenobi says. _“For our part, the generals will certainly practice the utmost discretion while on Coruscant. You have my word.”_

“We don’t have enough beds!” Fox says desperately. “We don’t have enough holding cells, sir, we can’t—”

 _“Mm. I’ll see what I can do about extra housing allowances in the city,”_ Kenobi says, _“and as to holding cells… let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”_

“Have you ever _seen_ a vod on shore leave?” asks Fox, who has been subject to millions at this point, and had nearly all of them cycle through the cells below.

 _“Ah, well,”_ Kenobi says with a little grimace. _“The ships will be in orbit, and they all have fully-equipped brigs. But I wouldn’t worry, Commander Fox— the Force is telling me this will be a very fruitful visit, and we have you to thank for it.”_

“Oh, the _Force_ ,” Fox says into his hands. “If the _Force_ says it’s fine.”

_“We’re entering our last hyperspace jump in a few minutes, so I will let you return to your work. We should be in the system before nightfall, so until then— truly, vor entye.”_

“If you were really grateful you’d kill me now,” Fox mumbles in the same language, and the bastard has the gall to chuckle before the holo winks out.

* * *

**COMMAND CHAT (CTS WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT)**

**—————————————————————————-**

CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: rules for shore leave in my jurisdiction (yes this covers the entire planet, yes that extends from molten core to exosphere, no there are no exceptions):  
CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: 1) no fighting. none. not with troopers and not with the pubic and NOT with SENATORS **@ponds @cody  
**CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: 2) no intoxicants of any kind in public  
CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: 2.1) no intoxicants in the barracks either  
CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: 3) no weapon discharges outside of shooting ranges and training grounds  
CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: 4) no going below level 35  
CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: 5) no pools, fountains, or other public bodies of water  
CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: 5.1) keep your kriffing clothes on, it’s not that hard  
CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: 6) no body modifications that need more than five days to heal  
CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: 7) no racing outside of approved tracks in entertainment arenas  
CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: 7.1) guard equipment, especially speeders, is totally off-limits for troopers not assigned to the guard  
CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: 8) no animal adoptions, sapient or otherwise  
CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: 8.1) this includes children of any species  
CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: 9) no marriages, Republic-recognized or otherwise  
CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: 10) absolutely no civilians (ESPECIALLY jetii and jetii spawn) in the barracks  
CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: you break any of these and i’m putting you on the next ship to the penal colonies and erasing your designation from GAR records  
CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: do not try me, vode

CC-1004//GREE: … anyways i was thinking we should pregame at Fox’s place  
CC-1004//GREE: he’s got that sweet penthouse at general barracks   
CC-1004//GREE: dock code 101010, door code 010101

CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: GREE YOU STINKING SHABUIR  
CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: MY OWN BATCHMATE

CC-3636//WOLFFE: fox  
CC-3636//WOLFFE: vod  
CC-3636//WOLFFE: that is some horrifically bad opsec on those codes

CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: DON’T KARKING TALK TO ME ABOUT KARKING OPSEC  
CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: IF WE ALL LIVE THROUGH THIS WEEK, I’M GIVING MYSELF A MEDAL OF VALOR AND A MILLION CRED CASH AWARD

* * *

“I was picturing something a little nicer when Gree said penthouse,” Rex says, looking rumpled and uncomfortable in his GAR-issue civvies. It’s impossible not to; the things come in one size and three colors and have usually spent the last few months at the bottom of a trunk under the polish rags and field repair kits. Rex’s still has creases from the packaging.

“If you came to talk shit about my quarters, you can jump off the karking balcony,” Fox says from the couch, arm thrown over his eyes. “Take Gree with you when you go.”

“Don’t be like that. Rex even brought you a hostess gift,” Cody says, nudging Rex forward with his shoulder. He’d probably shove with his hands, but his arms are full of grain alcohol. 

Fox’s apartment is certainly bigger than a ship bunk, and does technically occupy the top floor of a two hundred story building. It smells new, like fresh paint and solder, and the carpet is still mostly the same color everywhere. But it’s a long narrow bootbox with tiny windows and ugly, industrial-grade furniture shoved up against the walls like Fox didn’t know what else to do with it. There’s an alcove at the far end with two closed doors, and opposite them an open archway where Wolffe leans against the wall, a half-drunk black ale in his hand. The walls themselves are bare except for a flimsi map of Coruscant and a big but battered holoscreen that looks like it fell off the back of a Jawa “salvage” ship. On the tiny balcony visible through transperisteel doors, there’s an overturned ammo crate serving as extra seating and beyond that, a noisy commuter lane of air traffic. 

If this is what the cushiest command in the GAR gets a vod, Rex thinks, he’s in no hurry to move up the ranks.

“Drinks go in the chillbox,” Gree calls. A hand appears from around the corner of the archway and makes grabbing motions. “Gimme.”

“It’s, a. It’s a plant,” Rex says, and Fox’s arm lifts just enough to reveal one eye.

“A plant,” he says flatly. 

“A live one?” Wolffe asks, taking a pull from his bottle. “Is it poisonous?”

“No, it’s not kriffing poisonous,” Rex says, and sets it on the caf table at Fox’s knee. Three round, thick leaves sprout out of the middle of a pot of dirt about ten centimeters across. “Thanks for having us or whatever.”

“Fuckin’ suck up,” Bly says, smacking him on the back of the head on his way to Woffle. 

“Commander Tano made me!” Rex says, getting belligerent under Wolffe’s sly grin. Fox uncovers his face entirely to pick up the little pot, ceramic glazed in bright red.

“Sure she did, vod’ika,” Cody says, taking another shaky step inside. “Hey, is anyone going to help me with these and the cases outside? Or am I drinking on the dock alone?”

“We’d _never,_ ” Ponds says from behind him, arms coming around his waist to grab at bottlenecks. “Here, just let me get those—”

While Cody curses him and tries to keep bottles from falling to the floor, Jet appears in the doorway with Bacara and Doom leering over his shoulder, bags and bags hanging off their bodies. Not everything in the bags looks drink-shaped. Not everything in the bags looks strictly legal. 

“Hey, shabuire! Hope you’re ready to get karking _obliterated.”_

From the couch, Fox lets out a noise like a dying bantha and curls onto his side, plant in the protective cradle of his arms.

* * *

“But for real, wasn’t this storage space the last time we were here?” Monnk asks, looking around the bootbox from his position on the floor. “I could have sworn it was, and Fox was across the hallway. I thought he had a bathtub and everything.”

“It was,” Gree confirms, sitting on Fox’s legs and using his ass as a coaster. The vod had refused to join any initial toasts or move from the couch, and his brothers had responded accordingly. “He did. Too fancy for you, Foxy?”

“Needed the space for the GAR,” Fox mutters. It’s muffled, because in addition to Gree on his legs there’s also Wolffe on his calves, Jet's bony ass digging into his spine, and Bacara sitting on the back of the couch with his feet braced next to Fox’s face. 

“I poked around, it’s just another rec room,” Bacara says, pouring Rex another shot of something purple. “Workstations and holobooks and shit.”

“Why would general barracks need another rec room?” Jet asks, poking Fox between the ribs where it hurts the most. “Don’t you shebs have a pool in the basement? Huh?”

“What? Kark you guys,” Ponds says, immediately incensed. “I’d kill for a pool on our ship!”

“I’ve got a pool on my ship,” Monnk says gloomily. “It’s a nightmare. Trust me.”

“It is a _career development center,”_ Fox enunciates, trying to pull an arm free to slap at Jet’s fingers. “It’s for training. For after.”

“Oh, vod,” Doom sighs. 

“Well fuck me,” Bly says. 

Wolffe shakes his head and takes another shot. “Kriffing optimistic of you.”

“That’s _amazing_ ,” Rex says with glassy earnestness, not noticing when Bacara tops up his cup again. “Is any of it on datalink?”

“Of course it is,” Fox grumbles. “It’s in every karking newsletter. Why do I even bother?”

“Because ori’vod has a heart of zeebmallow,” Cody says, and leans in to blow huge wet raspberries against Fox’s neck while he struggles and yells obscenities; Wolffe, Jet, and Gree hold him down until they’re all crying with laughter and Fox finally squirms free, maroon-faced and glaring hotly. He decamps in high dudgeon to the kitchen “to get my plant out of the demolition zone, you karking animals,” and all of them blow raspberries at his retreating back, too.

“Love you, ori’vod!” 

“Jump off the kriffing balcony! Handle turns to the left.”

* * *

“I bet I could make that,” Rex says, mysteriously bottomless drink in hand, eyeing the distance from the balcony to the speeder dock. He’s swaying a little where he stands, like seaweed caught in a slow, rocking current. “In armor, easy. And ‘Soka would— would toss me over no problem. But bet I could still land it now.”

“Do it,” Bacara says around his synthcig. 

“Do a backflip,” Ponds suggests.

“Yeah?” Rex says with a grin, shaking out his muscles. “ _Yeah._ Alright, watch this shebs—”

Cody comes charging out of the apartment to catch Rex around the hips just as his feet clear the railing, and there’s a chorus of disappointed noises as they drop back to the duracrete.

“There’s a ledge three stories down, we’re not _monsters,”_ Jet says to Cody’s furious glare.

“I could have made it!” Rex insists, dangling from the hold like a scruffed kitten.

“And you, vod’ike, just lost balcony privileges,” Gree sighs, leaning out of the open doorway. “Get in here. Bac, put that shit out, that’s disgusting.”

* * *

“But— but what if she only l-likes me for my body?” Bly wails, curled up under the caf table. Ponds is rubbing his back while Rex holds his hand. Cody has tissues. “What am I going to _do?”_

“Well, it’s definitely not for your personality,” Monnk mumbles into his drink, and grunts when Wolffe kicks him in the shins.

* * *

“— so I guess I’d marry the Tippy twins, kriff Secura— shut _up,_ Bly— and space Koon. He’s nice enough, but shabuir is just too karking ugly,” Jet says with a shudder. “Ugh.”

“How— how dare you. How _fucking_ dare you. I challenge you,” Wolffe says, index finger weaving through the air like he’s tracing arcane symbols, “to a fucking duel. With lightsabers. At dawn.”

“You don’t have a lightsaber,” Bacara says. “Nobody here has a karking lightsaber.”

Cody pulls a lightsaber from his jacket pocket and lays it in the middle of the caf table with a deliberate _clack_. Everyone stops talking for a moment to stare at it, expressions ranging from befuddled awe to total consternation.

“He left it on his cafeteria tray this afternoon,” Cody says. “I thought I’d better keep it with me after that.”

Doom’s eyebrows are all the way up in his lack of hairline. “Vod…”

Fox suddenly snorts. “Well, we know who you’d kriff,” he says, taking a sip of water. _Water._ If Jet hadn’t seen Bacara spiking it, he’d be mortally offended on behalf of all vode everywhere. 

“Nah,” Cody says, bland as bantha butter. “I’d kriff Mundi.”

Bacara and Jet make the same disgusted noise at the same volume at the same time, and half of Jet’s drink goes down his shirt as he recoils.

“What? Man has five wives and seven kids, you’re telling me he’s not good at what he does?” Cody says, face conveying nothing but honest curiosity, and _Jet cannot tell if he’s joking._

“You’re a sick fuck, vod,” Wolffe declares, ire apparently forgotten, and staggers in a circle to face the kitchen. “I’m opening another bottle, anyone else ready for more?”

All hands in the room go up except Fox, who takes another fortifying sip of mostly-water and continues glowering into the distance. 

* * *

“Okay so the first one was— fighting,” Gree reads off, scrolling back through his comm. He’s trying to hold his overfull cup with the same hand, and it isn’t working very well. “Fighting vode, the public, or senators.”

Fox lies mostly unconscious on the floor next to him, such an unbelievable show of lightweightedness they hadn’t had the heart to draw dicks on his face. His hand _is_ in a bowl of warm water. Just to see what happens.

“I can do fighting,” Doom says, belching loudly.

“Next was incoxi— intoxicants. In public or barracks. Think that’s settled.”

“Jet and I can do the public part, though,” Bacara says, and takes the high five from his brother as his due. “Sith hells, yeah.”

Gree nods sagely, and scrolls. “Discharging weapons— gotta be Rex.”

Rex tries to salute him, and hits himself in the eye instead. “Ow! Sir yes sir!”

Gree smiles and leans over to rub a hand through his blond buzz. “Take care of yourself, vod’ika. You can start below level 35, that’s the next one on the list.”

“Sir!”

“And pools— Monnk, your time has come.”

“I have trained for this moment all my life,” Monnk says solemnly, upside down in Fox’s only armchair. 

“But are you up to the second part of this challenge?” Gree says, matching his seriousness. “Fox absolutely forbade us from losing our clothes, trooper— can you handle the responsibility?”

Monnk nods sharply, determination in every line of his body. “I’ve studied for years under the most dedicated nudist in the entire Jedi order. I won’t let you down, sir.”

“Little gods bless your endeavors, brother,” Gree says. “Ponds? You up for some piercings?”

Ponds throws up a fist from behind the couch. _“Oya!”_

 _“Oya!”_ says every other vod in the room— including Fox, gurgled into the carpet. It’s a hard reflex to beat.

“Wolffe? Racing?”

“You know it,” Wolffe says, and his eyes light up when Gree sticks his hands in Fox’s pockets until he comes up with the Guard masterkey, and tosses it over. Wolffe doesn’t catch it, but it only takes him three tries to pick it up from the floor. 

“... maybe confine that racing to barrack hallways, though,” Gree says, watching this. 

Wolffe nods a bit morosely, then brightens again. “Barracks _and_ the Senate complex?”

Gree grins. “Excellent thought, commander.”

 _“_ You get the pet,” Bly says, pointing at Gree. “Or kid. _I’m_ getting married.”

“Secura’s not going to marry your sorry ass,” Jet says, and when Bly turns on him he gestures as if to say _look at you._

“Bly, why don’t you just invite her over for a sleepover,” Gree says encouragingly, sniping Jet with his eyes. “No pressure. We know she loves you, vod— just, maybe don’t spring this on her right now, if you want something serious later.”

“Alright,” Bly says. “Alright, yeah. I can do that. She’s karking insatiable, won’t be hard.” He smiles meanly at Jet, who rolls his eyes. 

“And yeah, pets is me. General Unduli has been making noises like she might like a ship tooka,” Gree says. “I think little Barriss will like it too. That leaves marriage for Codes— uh, sorry vod. Do your best?”

“‘kay,” says Cody.

“Alright, vode— we break these rules and we break ‘em hard! Or _die trying!”_ Gree yells, surging to his knees. _“Oya!”_

 _“Oya!”_ comes raw from every throat, full of pride and belief in the power of the vode to rise above, to overcome all obstacles. 

“I’m going to be a sec, though,” says Ponds. “Can’t really feel my legs at the moment.”

“Yeah, same,” Wolffe says. “Maybe a little nap first.”

“A small nap,” Monnk allows, eyes already closing. “Then victory without limits. Oya.”

 _“Oyaaaaa,”_ Rex yawns, and pillows his head on his arms.


	10. 10. Brig

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Obi-Wan is first aware of a sense of slight disruption, as if things are not quite where he left them and his subconscious resents the change. It’s a prickle behind his closed eyes and an itch in his fingers that eventually grows strong enough to pull him from sleep into deeply annoyed half-wakefulness. One lid lifts just enough for a sliver of reconnaissance. 
> 
> Things are certainly not where he left them, and seeing the mound of unconscious troopers surrounding his position is enough to drag both eyes open despite the merciless glare of bio-fluorescent lighting overhead and the way the room is spinning. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-specific tags: Aftermath of drunken shenanigans, the 212th shows UP, tattoos, /eyes emoji

Obi-Wan is first aware of a sense of slight disruption, as if things are not quite where he left them and his subconscious resents the change. It’s a prickle behind his closed eyes and an itch in his fingers that eventually grows strong enough to pull him from sleep into deeply annoyed half-wakefulness. One lid lifts just enough for a sliver of reconnaissance. 

Things are certainly not where he left them, and seeing the mound of unconscious troopers surrounding his position is enough to drag both eyes open despite the merciless glare of bio-fluorescent lighting overhead and the way the room is spinning. 

He’s slumped against a cool and faintly damp duracrete wall, warm bodies on either side keeping him relatively upright. The other three walls are made of heavy metal bars running from scuffed floor to low, water-stained ceiling. There’s a large Coruscant Guard symbol on the wall beyond the forest of bars, and a trooper in red-edged armor standing just barely in view. That eases most of his immediate concern, and stops the instinctive slide of his hand towards his belt where his lightsaber is digging uncomfortably into his stomach. 

Obi-Wan is not as much a stranger to waking up in holding cells as he would like, but it has been some time since it happened in friendly territory. He wonders what the occasion is. 

Scanning the immediate vicinity, Captain Gregor is the first trooper he recognizes. The man is sprawled belly-up next to Obi-Wan’s legs, inexplicably shirtless and snoring like an open pod engine. Waxer and Boil are to his right, stacked one on top of the other like kindling. Barlex is in the fetal position around an open, empty bottle, and Crys’ boots are just visible from under the single bunk. Butcher, always the most sensible, is sleeping on the bunk itself with a pillow clutched to his stomach. Obi-Wan’s eyes track over the rest of the sleeping figures sharing his cell and he realizes the majority of his command and special forces teams are present. 

The majority, with one key and concerning exception. Obi-Wan has just started frowning when an arm tightens around his waist, pulling him awkwardly sideways into someone’s shoulder. A voice growls something truly foul in Mando’a into the side of his head.

Obi-Wan smiles. “Anatomically unfeasible, I’m afraid,” he says, and pats the hand on his stomach. “Good morning, Cody.”

“Good morning,” Cody grumbles, breath hot on his ear. “For buir’s sake, _why is it so bright.”_

“We are suffering the consequences of our misdeeds of the night, I fear,” Obi-Wan says with a soft laugh. “Which were many. So many I’m having difficulty remembering them all.”

He shifts, and feels Cody shift at the same time, and they move and resettle against each other with comfortable familiarity. Cody’s torso now blocks most of the duracrete chill, and his chin comes to rest on Obi-Wan’s shoulder. “I admit to nothing,” the man says, his arm still a heavy weight under Obi-Wan’s sternum. 

“I lay it all at your feet,” Obi-Wan says airly. “I had every intention of spending my evening in quiet retirement at the temple dormitories, and was lured out under false pretenses.”

“I said we’d have fun,” Cody counters. “Didn’t we?”

Obi-Wan is surveying the honorable wounded around them with more attention to detail now; no one looks actually injured, which is excellent, but they’re all in various forms of stupor. “You _assured_ me I’d arrive fresh as a Felucian daisy to my council meeting this morning.” Which is going to be a headache to explain to his fellow masters. 

“We kept it tame.”

“There were speeder races around the barracks, Cody,” he says. “And backflips off them at speed, if I recall correctly.”

“I’d still say that was pretty tame for shore leave. Sir.”

“Let’s not start with that,” Obi-Wan chides him. “We were doing so well.”

Cody hums in amusement or agreement, the low vibration sending a pleasant shiver down Obi-Wan’s spine. “Alright, then. Obi-Wan.”

 _“Thank_ you,” he says. “I… wait. Is that—? Is that Commander Doom?”

It really is Doom, or at least his distinctive kama, barely visible from under a pile of the 212th in a corner of the walls of bars. “Mm, too bad,” Cody says. “I wonder how many of the other commanders got caught.” 

The statement both alarms and intrigues Obi-Wan, and he prods Cody’s arm. “Plural commanders? Oh, do elaborate.”

Cody shrugs. “Had some drinks, made some bets. Look, Wolffe’s in the next cell over,” he says, leaning a bit to the side to squint through the bars. “And a handful of the Wolfpack. I think I see Bacara and Jet in that other one. I’d still say the 212st made the best showing, though.” He sounds proud.

“Commander Fox did try to warn me,” Obi-Wan muses, and feels a shake of laughter run through Cody’s body. 

A door opens, somewhere beyond the sightlines of the open cells, and Commanders Thorn and Stone walk into view with long batons and twin grins of pure malevolence. “Good morning, troopers!” Stone yells with the trained bellow of a drill sergeant. “How are we feeling this fine Zhellday?”

Groans and pleas for mercy build through the cells, strengthening as Thorn starts down one side with his baton striking each bar, the _CLANK CLANK CLANK_ hammering deeper into Obi-Wan’s skull each time it connects. 

“Shall we, then?” he asks Cody, and the man pushes himself up the wall with only a little coltish wobbling, and holds out a hand for Obi-Wan to take. 

There’s a flash of pain on his face when Obi-Wan does, though, and Obi-Wan looks down at their fingers in concern as he reaches his feet. And oh, dear, he really is still tipsy, the room doing wide waltzing swings around his head before it settles into a mildly nauseating sway. He leans into Cody’s steady frame out of pure self-preservation. 

“Are you hurt? Let me see.”

Cody resists for a moment, and then allows Obi-Wan to turn his hand over and lift the palm to the light.

There is a small new tattoo, fine-lined and intricate, on the crease where his palm and left ring finger meet. The skin underneath is pink and tender, and Cody twitches as Obi-Wan rubs his thumb across it.

“It’s beautiful,” Obi-Wan murmurs, under the sound of a hundred troopers finding their feet and yelling at the Guard to _shut the kark up already, we’re up, we’re up!_

Cody watches Obi-Wan admire it for another moment, then gently takes his wrist and turns his own hand over. 

“Oh,” Obi-Wan says. They aren’t quite identical, but both are clearly parts of the same overall design. It doesn’t hurt as much as he might have expected— he doesn’t have any other tattoos to compare it to— but it does look more red on his fairer skin. “Oh, that’s… that’s lovely.”

“Yeah?” Cody asks, dark eyes fixed on Obi-Wan’s face. 

Obi-Wan looks up then, his own eyes a bit wide, and Cody folds their hands together and holds them against his chest. He squeezes once, deliberately. At their feet, Gregor has finally woken up and is getting laboriously to his feet, loudly complaining about his back to anyone in earshot.

“Let me take you to breakfast,” Obi-Wan says suddenly, fingers tightening on Cody’s. “We’ll— we should have breakfast, I think.”

“Alright,” Cody says. “I could eat.”

There’s another clanging door opening, and the unmistakable voice of Mace Windu rising above the clamor to request everyone’s attention and compliance. Obi-Wan winces. 

“Though I suspect I’m about to spend some time being taken to task for damage to the temple’s reputation and conduct unbecoming,” he says. “But— find me afterwards? Please?”

Cody nods, palm dry and warm on Obi-Wan’s knuckles. “I’ll find you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter inspired by my favorite clone shenanigans fic of all time, SailorSol’s [Sheresoy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24337255), which was in turn inspired by Project0506’s [It's Always on Taungsdays](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24319141). [Zhellday](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Galactic_Standard_Calendar#Days_of_the_week) is the day after Taungsday.


	11. 11. Children

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A young— very young— togruta child is gazing up at him, dressed in what looks like a brown bathrobe and matching baggy trousers. She stares unblinkingly, her small orange face unnaturally solemn.
> 
> “Are you a clone?” she asks.
> 
> “... I am,” Fox says.
> 
> “We’re lost,” the child says, and holds up her arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-specific tags: commander fox's ongoing no good, very bad week; going to the senate complex is probably a lot like touring the capitol dome right
> 
> This chapter now has super cute fanart! Please [feast your eyes](https://adinavdeb.tumblr.com/post/627579328659603458/fanart-of-commander-fox-with-a-pair-of-jedi) and leave [aliche13](https://aliche13.tumblr.com/) some kudos!

Fox spends his morning with his bucket off and his face pressed to the cold floor under his desk, longing for the quiet respite of death. Stabbing pain behind his eyes renders him unable to enjoy even muted security footage of Mace Windu dragging General Kenobi out of Cell Block Alpha by his collar. Whatever his brothers slipped him last night— and he highly doubts it was only alcohol, or even mostly alcohol— it’s given him one of the worst headaches of his existence and a stomach intent on crawling out of his mouth and going its own way in the world, irrespective of the rest of him. 

“Uh, boss?” Thire says from the doorway. “You still escorting the high-level delegation from Naboo this afternoon?”

Maybe if he doesn’t move, Thire will think he’s out. 

“Commander?” There’s a scuff as Thire shuffles further into the room, and then around the desk. He kicks Fox’s boot. “Still with us?”

“I will pay you a hundred credits to escort them instead,” Fox says, far beyond considerations of personal dignity and the integrity of his office. “Just take them to the hall of flags first. They’ll take nine billion photos, miss the meeting, and then it’ll be time to escort them out again.”

“Gungans, right? No deal,” Thire says easily, squatting to get his hands under Fox’s arms. He hauls him upright with a grunt, and Fox immediately collapses back against the desk as his stomach makes another bid for emancipation. But it settles after a moment to a low, twisting roil, and when Thire taps his helmet against his chestplate Fox takes it. 

“ _Ugh._ Two hundred.”

“C’mon, boss, the sooner you get them upstairs to Binks, the sooner you can pawn them off on his security detail.”

“That… is not a bad plan,” Fox says, eyeing his subordinate. “Exactly how frequently do you find yourself using it, trooper?”

“I have never shirked assigned duties in my life, commander,” Thire says. “Stone, now. Sheb wouldn’t know honest work if it bit him.”

And so Fox finds himself standing at slightly wilted parade rest in the middle of the noisiest, most chaotic area of the Senate complex— the grand welcoming lobby, with its statues and ten-story holos and rude, pushy tourists— waiting for an unknown number of Representative Binks’ countrymen. They’re already twenty minutes late. Nevermind that he’d been ten. Coruscant’s eponymous glittering skyline seems determined to refract every bit of available sunlight directly into his visor, but with his HUD set to solar surface shading and his ear protection at maximum it’s almost peaceful inside his helmet. The good citizens of the Republic, whose lives he had been created to preserve at all costs, keep a wide enough berth around his position to be insulting if he gave it any thought. Better not to, and just to stand and silently scan the crowd for errant gungans without thinking much of anything.

He ignores the first brush against his mind, like someone blowing on his exposed brain. The Jedi seem to throw around extrasensory touches with a schutta’s wild abandon— the generals did it, the temple clerical staff did it, even the Chancellor did it, with whatever odd unacknowledged Jedi status he held. Fox considers it bad manners, and doesn’t react until the brush is followed by a sharp, impolite knock on the armor covering his back. 

He turns slowly to look over his shoulder, and then down.

A young— very young— togruta child is gazing up at him, dressed in what looks like a brown bathrobe and matching baggy trousers. She stares unblinkingly, her small orange face unnaturally solemn.

“Are you a clone?” she asks.

“... I am,” Fox says.

“We’re lost,” the child says, and holds up her arms.

Fox contemplates the child, the robes, and the other, smaller body pressed close to her back: a human boy, dark-haired, wearing the same unfortunate ascetic’s garb as the togruta. 

“What exactly are you lost from?” he asks. The answer seems obviously Jedi-adjacent, but maybe there are other badly-dressed Force sensitives running around. It’s a big galaxy. It could happen.

“The crechemaster,” the togruta child says, gesturing demandingly with her spread hands. “I’m Ashla. I’m _tired_.”

“Liam. Hungry,” the human child says, barely above a whisper.

The girl proves a wiggly, chatty armful despite her claims of tiredness, and the boy attaches himself to Fox’s pauldron and doesn’t let go even after Fox has taken them up to the vendors’ floor, where they stop at an overpriced kiosk to buy juice and packages of gnunuts and jerky.

“— and we went to the Senate floor but it was empty and _boring_ and Liam said the heights made him sick so we—” 

“Thorn, I don’t care what you’re doing,” Fox hisses into his communicator under Ashla’s babble, mindful of her and the child still on his hip trying to unscrew a bottle with tiny fingers. “I need backup to the vendors immediately.”

_“What’s the issue, commander? Hungry gungans on the rampage?”_

Fox braces a leg on the bench to keep Liam in place and frees a hand to take the bottle to unscrew the top; it really is stuck fast. “They haven’t showed yet, at least not before I left the lobby. I’ve got two little kids dressed like jetii looking for a, a crechemaster—” 

_“Oh, initiates? You didn’t touch them, did you?”_

“What?” The cap comes free and Liam grabs for it with a happy noise.

_“Because then they’ll smell like you, and the adult jetii won’t take them back. We’ll have to raise them ourselves.”_

Fox has a moment of yawning panic before common sense catches up with him. “Not ka— darking funny, Thorn!”

_“Yeah it was. Look around for big groups and kriffed-off Masters— initiates usually run in packs, and they have a rabid protection detail. I’ll call upstairs, see if the gungans got lost on their way in.”_

“That is _not_ what I asked for,” Fox says, but he’s talking to empty comm static. 

“— and Master Ghi is so slow,” Ashla is saying scornfully through a mouthful of wet jerky, having torn open one of the bags with her tooka-kitten teeth. “Slower than anything. Slower than Master Yoda. I wanted to see the hall of flags, but I don’t know where it is. Can we go there now?”

“What? No. Our priority is locating your— master? Crechemaster,” Fox tells her, and when she starts to scowl he adds, “They must be worried about your safety.”

“I don’t care,” she declares. “I want to see the flags!”

“Well, we don’t always get what we want,” Fox says, righting Liam’s bottle before it can tip out of his hands and spill over the floor. 

“You’re a clone, you’re supposed to help,” she says with a sulky look. She stuffs another huge handful of jerky in her mouth and chews. “M’stah Ghi saysh.”

“I think I’ll be the most help if I return you to Master Ghi,” Fox says, righting the bottle again. But Liam’s whole body is beginning to go limp against his side, and Fox tugs the bottle from his unresisting grip and resettles the boy so his head has a place to rest. “Where were they last, when you decided they were going too slow?”

“The dumb statue place,” she says, which could describe any number of educational portions of the complex, including the lobby they just came from. “But they’re probably at the hall of flags by _now_. We should go and see.”

“No,” Fox says with a sigh. “We should not. We should stay here until my troops locate your master, and then have him escorted to our position.”

“That’s boring!”

“That’s what happens when you disobey orders and desert your squad,” Fox says, and holds out Liam’s juice. “Drink?”

Ashla pouts. “It’s got human germs on it.”

The problem is that Fox doesn’t really have any better ideas, after he spends another improbable amount of credits on more juice. He puts out an all-points bulletin to troopers on patrol while wrangling Liam’s dead weight, but no one rings back with a location for their Jedi crechemaster. One Guard team does report General Skywalker camped out in Senator Amidala’s suite again; she should really get the locks changed. Too bad the man is literally the last Jedi Fox would ever trust with children. 

“Is that a real blaster? Can I see it?” Ashla asks, already reaching, and Fox has to slap a hand over it to stop the pistol from leaping into her grip.

“Alright, new plan. Finish your jerky,” he tells her, “and we’ll go to the hall of flags.”

“Really?” she cries, and then to Fox’s great alarm crams the entire remaining contents of the pouch into one wide mouthful. 

“Don’t do that, you’ll—” She bares her tiny needle-sharp teeth and Fox stops cold in the middle of reaching for her. “Choke?”

“ _Won’t,”_ she growls.

“Alright. I’ll just… wait until you’re done then,” Fox says, easing back, and makes a mental note to ask Rex if Commander Tano also eats like a starving saberjaw.

Annoyingly enough, the girl is right— the moment they enter the cavernous, echoing hall, Fox locks eyes with a Kel Dor in long robes about fifty meters and two levels down, and Ashla twitches on his hip like someone’s flicked her lekku. 

“Yes, Master Ghi,” she mutters into her juice, lip poking out. “Sorry, Master Ghi.”

The presumed Master Ghi pulls children away from scattered displays with two sharp claps and bustles his charges up the ramps towards them with a speed and coordination Fox seldom sees outside of trained infantry. Ashla squirms to be put down, but Liam stays fast asleep as Ghi slips gentle arms under his small body and carefully lifts him away.

“I can’t thank you enough, trooper,” the Jedi says as he completes the transfer, looming over Fox by at least a head. “We are very sorry for any inconvenience, aren’t we? Ashla?”

“His name is Fox, not Trooper,” the togruta says. Fox definitely hadn’t told her, but that was jetii for you.

“Please apologize to Mr. Fox, then,” Ghi says mildly. 

Ashla fixes him with an appraising stare, and says instead, “Will you be my clone when I fight in the war?”

_“Initiate Ashla,”_ Ghi says, syllables whistling sharply through his mask, but stops when Fox raises a hand and kneels in front of her.

“The war will be over long before you’ll need a commander, ad’ika,” he says, and holds out the rest of the gnunuts and jerky. “If I’m wrong, come back in twenty years and we’ll talk. Okay?”

“Mmkay,” she says, already paying more attention to the jerky than him. She grabs the pouches and performs a bouncing little bow before trotting back to the other initiates, all wide eyes and curious stares crowded up behind Master Ghi. Underneath his helmet, Fox smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 


	12. 12. Debt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Anakin,” Obi-Wan responds, eyes still closed. “If you have strayed so far from your meditation practice as to not even recognize the poses, I’m sure the crechemasters would be happy to provide remedial instruction.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-specific tags: anakin skywalker: least subtle being in the known galaxy, obi-wan: voted 'biggest little shit' by his peers on the council

“Master?”

Blooming through its interiors like a secret beating heart, the meditation gardens of the temple are an astonishing marvel of cultivation, that earliest of sapient arts: lush and verdant and entirely unnatural. The dense mingling of species and biomes is made possible only by hundreds of years of careful maintenance and controlled growth, from towering canopies to trickling streams, winding their way through roots and rock to reach deep pools of clear, still water. 

“Hey, Master?”

That intent, that mastery of environment is part of what makes meditation in the gardens so singularly soothing. Even for a master more in tune with the Cosmic than the Living Force, the beautiful result of the guiding hands of generations is a pure pleasure to behold, to trace with the mind and the spirit and follow deep into the shared consciousness that spans them all: the Force entire, resonating like an exquisite bass note under all the galaxy’s tiny efforts and brief lives. 

“Obi-Wan?”

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan responds, eyes still closed. “If you have strayed so far from your meditation practice as to not even recognize the poses, I’m sure the crechemasters would be happy to provide remedial instruction.”

“Sorry,” Anakin says quickly and with a total lack of contrition. Then, “I need to call in a favor.”

Obi-Wan cracks an eye at that, and looks down at his former padawan. Anakin is looking back with the hopeful grin of a hungry massiff, leaning up against the large flat stone Obi-Wan had chosen specifically for its location at the far end of the largest pond, curtaining branches, and isolation from the winding paths that mark the rest of the gardens. Not that it seems to have mattered. 

“I don’t recall owing you any favors.”

“Sabacc tourney, five months ago in the Gordian Reach,” Anakin says with confidence. Despite the intervening years and extensive training in ethics and diplomacy, he still possesses a very Outer Rim attitude towards cataloging debts and maintaining accounts. “We played for favors once we ran out of clothes.”

“Ah,” Obi-Wan says. “I remember now.” He thinks he owes favors to multiple members of their respective companies, actually; armored clones had a rather unfair advantage in any clothing-based exchange.

“Anyway, it’s not something super big,” Anakin says. “I just need your opera tickets for tomorrow night.”

“Oh, is that all,” Obi-Wan says very dryly. “My thousand-credit Correllian opera tickets for the return of Madame Belondu from retirement, for perhaps the last-ever performance of _Ig Palami g’Tangu_ in our lifetimes _._ Those opera tickets?”

“You didn’t pay a thousand creds for them,” Anakin protests. “You won them in the temple lottery like every other lucky sheb.”

“Which doesn’t decrease their value,” Obi-Wan points out. “Why in the world would you need them?”

“Um,” Anakin says. “I… want to see it?”

Obi-Wan sighs deeply, and unfolds his legs from seated lotus. “Do you need money?”

“What? No!”

“Are you being blackmailed, then?” Obi-Wan asks, coming to the edge of the rock to better scrutinize Anakin’s increasingly shifty expression. “Pressured by someone?”

“Master, _no._ The tickets are for me.”

“We could go together, then,” Obi-Wan says, watching him. He’d been considering making it an outing with Depa, or Luminara, or perhaps Ahsoka; Force knew the poor girl wasn’t likely to be exposed to any kind of high culture in the normal course of her studies. Not with Anakin as a master, happier in a junkyard than any site of civilization.

Anakin’s eyes slide away from Obi-Wan’s, even when Obi-Wan moves his head to intercept his wandering gaze. “I— yes, that would be… fun, but I need both of the tickets.”

“For?”

“... reasons,” Anakin mumbles.

Obi-Wan is well aware of his own unfortunate tendency to allow his padawan anything he asks for, but the prevarications on top of the interruption are deeply, deeply annoying. “And are these reasons illegal?” he presses. 

“No, not—”

“Against the Code?”

“No,” Anakin says, firmly. Too firmly. “It’s just an opera. With a friend.”

“A friend,” Obi-Wan says, unimpressed, and a sudden memory of Padmé Amidala’s desk comes to him: a bright scattering of holo playbills at the corner, from theaters across the district. “I see.”

Anakin’s face is getting unattractively blotchy by this point, but as Obi-Wan settles back and draws breath to tell Anakin he remains the worst liar of Obi-Wan’s acquaintance, his hand flattens against the rough stone. The sensitized skin under his knuckle scrapes against the granite and flares briefly into pain.

“... fine,” Obi-Wan says, clipped. He suspects there might be some red rising in his own face and can’t quite bring himself to resent it, fingers curling gently into his palm. “But there will be a price.”

“Really?” Anakin says eagerly, and then frowns. “But I already—”

“Do you want the tickets or not? Come. Sit with me.”

Anakin makes a face, but clambers up onto the rock when Obi-Wan pats the space next to him and only rolls his eyes once before mirroring Obi-Wan’s straight-backed posture.

Ten minutes into a patchy and increasingly uneven joint meditation, there’s a loud splash and cut-off yelp from somewhere on the water, invisible from their current secluded spot. Obi-Wan opens his eyes to see Anakin blinking past him towards the pond, but turns to see nothing but wide ripples spreading towards them to lap placidly at the banks.

“Someone fell in?” Anakin guesses.

“The garden attendants keep the koigar too well fed to go for stragglers,” Obi-Wan says, and because Anakin owes him at least this much repaid annoyance adds, “At least, they try. I understand some of our specimens are quite large.”

“Not funny, Master,” Anakin says, eyeing the crystalline water with deep-seated suspicion. 

“Ah! An intention for our meditation this afternoon,” Obi-Wan says with a smile. “Shall we contemplate our irrational fears together, Knight Skywalker?” 

“My fears are a hundred percent rational, thanks,” Anakin mutters, and closes his eyes again.

* * *

Obi-Wan rises slowly from the Force’s grip some hours later to find Anakin fast asleep, boots hanging off the side of the rock and head cushioned by the folded hem of Obi-Wan’s robe. He wonders why he bothers.


	13. 13. Garden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I appear to be missing a patient, padawan,” she says. “Where has Master Fisto run off to?”
> 
> “He was just discharged, master,” the girl says. 
> 
> “On whose clearance?”
> 
> “His own, master,” the girl answers. “He was rather insistent about it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-specific tags: vokara che is done with your shit, tentacles, brief drowning peril, animated kit fisto is a guillermo-style MILF (monster i'd like to fuck)

The visitor’s hangar of the Jedi temple is a place for transit, not long waits. There aren’t any chairs, unless Monnk wants to sit in his GAR-issue speeder halfway across the landing dock, and the guards at the entrance aren’t exactly the friendliest bunch. He wasn’t sure why he’d expected anything different; maybe because General Fisto is so free with his humor and affection, Monnk’s subconscious hadn’t seen any problem with the “go to temple, pick up boss, get the kark out” plan until it was staring him down with a lightsaber under his nose. 

But then again, his general is the exception that proves a lot of rules about the Jedi. Monnk takes off his helmet to meet the cold stare of the guard nearest to him and tries a smile. 

“Look, I don’t want to keep bothering you if I don’t have to,” he says, trying not to sound as annoyed as he feels. “But he’s not answering his comm and I don’t have another way to get ahold of him. Is there any way you could just— call the medbay? See if he’s up there?”

“The temple does not have a medbay,” the guard says, with the slow diction of someone explaining things to a child. “It has a medical  _ wing _ , which has hundreds working and recuperating inside it. So no, we cannot call the entire medical wing looking for one Jedi at the request of a clone trooper with no identification and no proof of official business.”

“Hey, my rank is right here _ , _ ” Monnk says, pointing to his epaulet, “and I’m here to see my  _ general.  _ You know, for that war we’re fighting? What the kark else do I need, a signed affidavit from the Chancellor?”

The guard squints. “Where?”

Kriffing natborns. And kriff Fisto too for making this so much harder than it needs to be. Monnk had been promised real food and drinks for picking him up, he could have been kicking back on the ship with the rest of the escort team instead of going head to head with this asshole. 

Before Monnk can ask the guard if he’s blind or just that Hutt-fucking stupid, a polite voice breaks in from behind his left shoulder. “Pardon me, gentlemen?”

The speaker is a short Twi’lek woman with an unassuming smile, lekku veiled and partially wrapped at the back of her head. She has a stack of datapads under one arm and is wearing the same drab robes as every other Jedi he’s ever seen, but Monnk’s not an idiot; he glances between her and the guards, who have stiffened to rigid, stonelike attention, and warily turns to face her. 

“I apologize for eavesdropping, but I overheard you were looking for someone in medical,” she says. “I might be able to assist in that case.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Monnk says. “That would be much appreciated.”

“You’re very welcome, commander,” she says. “And please forgive the assumption, but I think you must be here for Kit. Am I right?”

Monnk blinks. “Uh, yes. If you’ve got him.”

“Wonderful,” the woman says warmly. “Follow me, please.”

She makes for the door, Monnk dropping belatedly into formation behind her, and one of the guards takes a hesitant step forward. “Master Che,” he says. “The clone doesn’t have authorization to—”

“Nonsense,” the woman says briskly. “He has my authorization to accompany me wherever I choose. Move aside, please.”

And wonder of wonders, they do. Monnk makes direct eye contact with the first guard as he follows the woman— Master Che? He hasn’t heard the name before— through the gilded entry and has the pleasure of seeing his eye twitch before the decorative hangar doors close between them.

“Thank you for that, ma’am,” Monnk says, still keeping a carefully calculated minimum of distance between them. He doesn’t want any other temple guards up his ass, but he also has no idea who he’s following.

“I am always glad to see a patient released,” she says mildly, and slants him a look over her lekku that could freeze a vod solid at close range. “You will do me the favor of taking better care of him in the future, I hope.”

“Yes ma’am,” Monnk says, a little high-pitched, and she accepts this with an imperious nod.

They garner a few stares from passing Jedi as they make their way through the enormous entry hall and take approximately a thousand steps up to and through a wide gallery full of odd murals and reliefs. Monnk regrets the impulse to take off his helmet, because he can’t gawk at the levitating stone spheres circling each other in a random atrium they walk under, or investigate the rainforest-wet smell of an archway that seems to lead abruptly from cool stone into deep, dense jungle.

The medical wing is… big. Bigger than the biggest ship medbay Monnk has ever seen, and rivalling the decanting floors of Kamino. There seem to be hundreds of individual recovery rooms, in addition to the rows and rows of tanks. Monnk doesn’t want to concede anything to the flaming idiot in the hangar, but it would have been difficult to find Fisto in all of this without this diminutive woman leading him in.

“Hm,” Master Che says, coming to a stop in front of a particular bacta tank. It’s empty, and the life support tubing that would connect to a person trails out of the top to a wet patch on the floor. She claps her hands, and an aide of some kind breaks away from a tank at the end of the row and trots up to them. 

“Master Che?”

“I appear to be missing a patient, padawan,” she says. “Where has Master Fisto run off to?”

“He was just discharged, master,” the girl says. 

“On whose clearance?”

“His own, master,” the girl answers. “He was rather insistent about it.”

Master Che sighs expansively, and turns to Monnk. “That man is lucky I don’t put him in a prawn cage before he goes in the bacta,” she says. “But I know where he’ll be. Padawan Hamai, please escort the commander to the meditation gardens.” 

The girl looks askance at Monnk. “The gardens, master?”

“That is what I said,” Master Che says with a glacial edge, and the girl hurriedly bows.

Master Che gives Monnk a short bow as well, and he clanks a bit as he returns it. “It was good to meet you, commander. Apologies, but as you can see the patients here can't be left alone for a single moment.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you ma’am,” Monnk says.

She smiles at him, then. “So polite. May the Force be with you and Master Fisto.”

“Uh— you too,” Monnk says, and it must be a satisfactory response because she nods and sweeps serenely away.

That leaves him with Padawan Hamai, who comes up to maybe his chestplate and is looking at him with a reticent mix of caution and curiosity. 

“Follow me, please,” she says. It looks like she wants to say more, but isn’t sure how to ask. “It’s not far.”

She jerks her head in an unmistakable  _ this way  _ gesture and starts walking. Monnk follows, this time feeling freer to look around him as they pass into a different hall. It leads through a series of classrooms and open sparring areas, and there are more Jedi here to throng the corridors and stare unabashedly when they notice him.

“This... is your first time at the temple?” Hamai asks, awkward.

“Yeah,” Monnk says, craning his head back. Even the  _ ceiling _ has fiddly bits of shiny metalwork in geometric starbursts. “It’s pretty.”

“Well. Welcome,” she says. “We, um. We don’t see many outsiders here. I guess Master Che must trust you a lot.”

Monnk has never been good at estimating the ages of the Republic’s natborn citizens, but he’s revising Hamai’s age to much lower than originally assumed. “Just met her today,” he says, glancing back at her. “So I doubt it.” Pretty bad security posture for anyone but a Jedi, actually, but he knows from General Fisto you can get away with an annoying amount of bad opsec if you can also read minds and see the future.

“Oh,” she says. She’s looking increasingly uneasy. “Um.”

“I’m just here to get my general, and then we’ll leave,” he tells her more gently, feeling bad. “Are the gardens close?”

They turn a corner and there’s another tall archway leading into jungle, a chaotic explosion of greenery stopped at the stone threshold by a very faint shimmer in the air.

“Yes. Here you are,” Hamai says. “Do you— need anything else?”

“No. Thanks,” he says, mostly out of pity. “You can go.”

“Alright. Um,” Hamai says, then gives him a bow and flees back down the corridor.

He regrets letting her leave almost immediately, because stepping into the garden he realizes that the space is easily a Coruscanti city block in length and ascends several stories into the air. There are whole karking  _ trees  _ growing inside, along with a bewildering variety of plant life climbing the walls and sprouting from artificial rock formations. He could lead the team in a search and rescue mission and not cover the whole thing in twenty-four hours.

Then he sees the towering waterfalls and the deep ponds they empty into, and sighs.

Monnk hadn’t brought any of his ocean-going gear— funnily enough, he hadn’t that he’d need it on an oceanless city-planet— so he’s reduced to standing at the edges of various water features and glaring down into the depths, trying to decide if the rippling he sees at the bottom is filtered sunlight or a certain Nautolan’s headlimbs waving in amusement. Calling his name doesn’t work. Cursing him in every language he knows doesn’t either, though it does attract the attention of a pack of baby Jedi doing stupid poses under an enormous flowering bush and earns him a deadly glare from the adult Jedi accompanying them.

Fisto gets him as he’s crossing a low bridge spanning the largest pond, so close to the surface that every little disturbance sends a wash of water over the rough stone. One moment Monnk is strolling along and scanning the banks, and the next something erupts from the placid pond to his left and body-slams him into the water on the opposite side. He manages a yelp before he hits with an almighty splash; the blaster just clearing his holster gets knocked out of his hand and goes spinning away into the depths.

Monnk has good breath control but that requires some warning and  _ breath, _ which Fisto has effectively crushed out of him by breaching like a karking saberjaw. He struggles against the arms around his waist, gets friendly tentacles wound around head and chest for his troubles, and finally caves and uses the emergency air handsign as his chest starts seizing. 

There’s a disorienting rush as they shoot towards the surface, and Monnk gets dumped on a grassy shoreline along with a huge wave of water. General Fisto surges up over him with a toothy grin and an excited fanning of headlimbs weaving through the air, bare to the waist. And mostly bare below the waist, as well. There’s a lot of slippery-smooth, olive-toned skin on display. “Commander! You came.”

“Sir,” Monnk says, with all the violently offended dignity he can muster.

“Ah, but you look like a soaked tooka,” Fisto says. One of the tentacles has his helmet in its fleshy grip and waves it at him. “Very forlorn. Very sad. Next time, you’ll have to keep the your helmet on, yes?”

Monnk scowls and yanks his bucket free. “Bones all fine then, sir?” 

“Never better,” Fisto says brightly, and jumps to his feet with a surprising amount of energy for a man delivered to the temple on a stretcher just a week ago. “But now I am famished, and believe we have an appointment outside the temple. Shall we, commander?” 

“Fine, but my blaster’s at the bottom of the— hey, get back here! Sir!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Re: tentacles-- have you read Thea Hayworth's Integrate? You should read [Thea Hayworth's Integrate](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25259393-integrate)


	14. 14. Hand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The two of them arrive at different times and spend a calculated amount of that circulating separately, before orchestrated coincidence finds them standing in the same darkest corner of the mezzanine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-specific tags: angstakin, i like musicals but the rest of theater culture is... an acquired taste, padme's in it to win it

The opera is... pretty much exactly as awful as expected. The theater, a dusty relic from the expansionist age, is packed polished floor to gilt ceiling with rich kreshi swigging Corellian fizzy wines, nothing but painted faces and the kind of clothes that functioned more as mobile art installations than covering. All of them loud, smiling; all of them talking over, around, and through each other. Never with. It fills the Force with a kind of brassy psychic noise that sets his teeth on edge, and Anakin doubts there’s a single honest conversation happening in the whole sith-damned building. He hates it on a gut-deep level that makes it hard to hold his ground and smile back. 

The two of them arrive at different times and spend a calculated amount of that circulating separately, before orchestrated coincidence finds them standing in the same darkest corner of the mezzanine. They greet each other as nothing more than friendly acquaintances, and Padmé starts talking about solar weather. Despite the caution, Anakin feels eyes on them like crawling insects and instinctively tries to deflect the attention, like blocking blaster bolts. It’s distracting, and after several minutes of lost threads and one-word answers, Padmé smiles gently and gives up. He doesn’t blame her, not really, but it still twinges in his chest when she turns to the yattering couple beside them to exchange another round of airheaded pleasantries. 

It’s so frustratingly easy for her to blend into the noise, like just another empty mirror or vacant art piece. She’s not invisible, quite, but seems to disappear from the minds around them just by shifting her head just so, adding a laughing remark just there. Anakin can’t do it, either with his body or the Force; not without more sustained effort and mental exhaustion than  _ a night at the karking opera  _ should ever need.

He’d spent the first years of his life no more noticeable or important than a piece of furniture and he never wants to go back to it, but sometimes he wishes... well, he wishes a lot of things. But he wonders at times like these if he was just a man, no temple, no war, what it would be like to just let Padmé steer him through a crowd like this. To let it wash over him and make stupid small talk and not care, because no one would care about him. If it would be fun then, like she seems to find it, and not bone-crushingly exhausting.

It might be nice, he thinks, to matter only to her.

They separate again at the warning chime for the beginning of the performance, and he slips into the velvet-lined seat beside her only as the last of the lights go out. The tickets he’d pried out of Obi-Wan were excellent, Padmé had told him— near the center of the space and a few rows back from the stage. His brushes with theaters and the dramatic arts in general have been entirely against his will, so he accepts this as the truth and basks in the pleased curve of her mouth in the dark, the feeling of finally being able to give her something she wants for a change. 

The opera is written in an older dialect, and Anakin’s Corellian has never been more than conversational— no doubt he’d be disappointing Obi-Wan in more ways than one if the man were here to see him wincing as the vaunted Madame Belondu bursts into unintelligible soprano heartbreak. Sometime after a heavily stylized shipwreck and what the program assures him is the first of many tragic deaths, Anakin’s eyes stray from the performers to Padmé’s rapt profile and stay there; the flutter of her heart and the prick of tears in her eyes are so much more immediate in the Force than anything being happening in front of them. She’s so focused on the stage she doesn't notice him staring, leaning forward in her seat with her eyes wide and her teeth worrying at her bottom lip. It’s a habit she hates and has tried to break since childhood. He thinks it’s cute, but the last time he said that out loud, she’d sighed and asked if he  _ liked  _ the taste of bacta-balm. She certainly didn’t.

He’s missed her. It suddenly overwhelms him, how much and how deeply, and he has to turn away and close his eyes. He sinks into his awareness of her presence, her nearness, until they’re breathing in sync and his heartbeat has quickened to match hers. The next time her eyes fill with tears, so do his.

They don’t get up at intermission, just as loud and buzzy as the opening crowd. It’s not a calculated risk or a calculated anything— he just wants to sit and be still with his wife. Apparently his wife wants to sit with him, too, because she makes no move to rise. 

“Thank you, Anakin,” she says, pitched low under the babble. “This is incredible. I hope you’re enjoying at least some of it?”

Mostly hidden by the rivers of knotted silk that make up her skirts, her palm has settled casually, almost accidentally over his fingers.

“Yes,” Anakin says with total honesty, trapping her thumb in a loose grip. “It’s good. Great.”

Her eyebrows arch in silent skepticism, but she feels warm and well-pleased in the Force. “I’m not entirely sure you mean that, but I’m committed to finding  _ something  _ we both like.”

“Then you’re definitely coming to my next race, right?” he asks, and her groaning laughter is swallowed by the rise of the orchestra, signaling the beginning of the next act.


	15. 15. Old

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-specific tags: and now we'll take a look at how the less karked-up lineages are getting on

The restaurant Merguth’i Raiyon, a mainstay among Coruscanti elites of a certain age, still serves after many decades one of the finest pre-opera dinners on the entire Republica spine. Its decor hasn’t changed at all since Depa first saw it as a padawan— white walls and black floors, real wooden tables curtained on three sides by tall purple-blue vegetation, and in between the tables delicate fountains burble, with little fish whirling in the depths like tiny flecks of gold. 

It has a fixed menu that’s mostly humanoid-safe, and it’s close enough to the theater district to take the skybridges between towers. She happens to know for a fact that even though it’s long since aged out of all fashionability, it still commands prices dear enough to erase the majority of a master’s monthly temple stipend, but Raiyon and the theater are longstanding, treasured traditions now: she has so many good memories of tables just like this, Master Windu and herself dressed in their best robes, seated quietly together as the server slides the many courses across a spotless tablecloth. 

“That looks _gross_ ,” Caleb says, putting his hands on the table and leaning in to get a better look at the first course offering. In the brief period between the temple and the restaurant, he’s managed to get something dark and greasy smudged across his nose and on his fingers, now also smudged across the tablecloth. “Like pond scum. Are we supposed to eat it?”

“That is generally what one does with food, padawan,” Depa tells him. Even food that is admittedly rather green and slimy-looking, but she trusts Mace. 

Caleb straightens up. “Well, it _could_ be for handwashing. Our protocol master told us the story about that time Master Jinn drank the finger-water in Garnaris and got _wizard_ sick and Master Kenobi had to do all the meetings for him, and I don’t want to go to the opera by myself.”

“Excellent instincts,” Mace says gravely as Depa covers her smile with her sleeve; she’d forgotten that little episode. She’ll have to tell Obi-Wan it’s circulating again. “Master Billaba and I will test it first, to be sure.”

It proves to be a soup, cold and herby and delicious. Caleb watches them take three or four spoonfuls before he tries it himself, and badly suppresses a wince when Mace asks him how he likes it.

“It’s, uh. Really fresh?” he tries, mouth pulling in around the sourness.

“Full marks for diplomacy on this outing, padawan,” Depa says. “Perhaps the talee biscuits will be more to your liking?”

They are, enough that Mace’s portion finds itself into Caleb’s pockets and he’s still eating them when they start up the skybridge, all of Coruscant gleaming below them in the setting sun. Depa is a bit annoyed, but that’s because she’d saved most of her own for him as well and at least one of them should have remembered better than to give a child that much sugar before a period of forced stillness.

Their seats are excellent for second tier, right against the balustrades. She and Mace sit with Caleb in the middle, sharing some half-hearted idea in the Force of trying to contain his restless energy with their bodies. It doesn’t stop him for a moment from crawling around the row like a badly behaved monkey-lizard, and he’s vibrating next to her even after the cavernous room dims and the curtains rise on the first act. 

But the performance is lovely, and Caleb eventually calms down enough to notice, projecting his wonder in a way she’ll have to train him to contain. But not now. Not for this.

Caleb is the first on his feet when intermission arrives and the last to return when the warning chimes ring, dragging his boots in soulful boredom. He’s leaning on the railing in front of them, craning forward to peer into the orchestra pit, when a pulse of recognition rolls through him. Depa is already looking up when he glances back and points. 

“Hey, is that Ahsoka’s master?”

“Knight Skywalker?” Depa leans forward, scanning the crowd. “Where?”

“There,” Caleb says, arm straining forward. “Look, he’s got someone with him.”

“I suppose, if Master Kenobi came…?” she says, trailing off. She knows Obi-Wan had received tickets in the temple lottery as well, but she also very clearly remembers Anakin’s last theater outing involving a very loud, very public tantrum and the total destruction of a five thousand credit zero G chandelier.

“Ha,” Mace says, sitting back with folded arms. “Kenobi wouldn’t waste this on him.”

“No, it’s a _girl,”_ Caleb says with prurient interest. “She’s really pretty.”

“Ah,” Depa says as her eyes finally land on the pair, and the way they’ve turned to face each other. “Certainly not Master Kenobi.”

When she checks over her shoulder, Mace has sunk down in his plush chair and looks intensely pained. “I do not see it,” he pronounces, “and therefore have no knowledge of any inappropriate behavior or actions I might be required to report to the rest of the Council.”

“Well, I do,” Caleb says. “They’re holding hands!”

Mace puts a hand over tightly-closed eyes, and Depa takes pity on her old master. 

“Padawan, there will come a time when your fellow Jedi might act in ways you don’t understand or recognize as worthy of the Code,” she says. “And at that time—”

“It’s best to mind your business and let the fools dig their own graves,” Mace mutters. 

“As your grandmaster says,” Depa says. “Unless lives are at stake. Here, that is hardly the case—” Although Amidala could do much better with her life, and her choices. “—and the opera is starting again soon. Sit with me?”

Caleb obediently leaves the railing and sits, just as the lights start to dim again. She gives him one of her hidden talee biscuits for that, and feels the amusement radiating out from Mace when he notices the crunching.

It’s tradition, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have reached the mid-way point of this prompt list... on the 20th of the following month. wildly successful, actually


	16. 16. Paperwork

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CC-3636//WOLFFE: pretty sure i would know if i had rights all of the sudden  
> CC-3636//WOLFFE: don’t they send droids with a copy of the constitution and a tax bill

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-specific tags: chatfic, obligatory wolfpack adoption, plo you ARE the father, the quick fox jumps over the lazy chancellor

**COMMAND CHAT (CTS WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT)**

**—————————————————————————-**

CC-6454//PONDS: holy shit  
CC-6454//PONDS: holy tap-dancing, droid-blasting shit  
CC-6454//PONDS: drinks on  **@wolffe** tonight 

CC-3636//WOLFFE: ?

CC-6454//PONDS: and tomorrow night

CC-3636//WOLFFE: ?????

CC-6454//PONDS: and until the end of time and the HEAT DEATH of the karking UNIVERSE  
CC-6454//PONDS: or Kamino admits it’s not possible to patent a person, whichever happens first

CC-5052//BLY: hard same  
CC-5052//BLY: why?

CC-3636//WOLFFE: come on, i told you i have no idea how windu knew about the piercings  
CC-3636//WOLFFE: not my fault you clank when you walk now 

CC-6454//PONDS: I DON’T CLANK, you lying bastard  
CC-6454//PONDS: drinks on you forever because YOU, dadfucker, just got your own private clone rights bill signed off by the chancellor and THE JEDI COUNCIL

CC-3636//WOLFFE: ha  
CC-3636//WOLFFE: and it’s not even my decanting day

CC-6454//PONDS: I’M SERIOUS ASSHOLE

CC-3636//WOLFFE: pretty sure i would know if i had rights all of the sudden  
CC-3636//WOLFFE: don’t they send droids with a copy of the constitution and a tax bill

CC-6454//PONDS: listen, di’kut, i saw it through my own HUD   
CC-6454//PONDS: i’m minding my business in the staff room while windu argues with people on holo  
CC-6454//PONDS: which is eighty percent of what we do on coruscant, i don’t understand why we can’t do it from someplace nice like naboo  
CC-6454//PONDS: and koon busts in, drops this huge stack of flimsi and is all like, hard copy! :) notarized as requested! :)  
CC-6454//PONDS: and windu gives him this LOOK   
CC-6454//PONDS: and gets all like blah blah this can only be binding if the senate and civilian military leadership signs it blah  
CC-6454//PONDS: and koon is like they did! :) here’s the page! and it was the karking chancellor’s signature  
CC-6454//PONDS: and koon’s like, now you sign! :) :) :)

CC-3636//WOLFFE: it’s a real problem for me that you think you know what general koon’s :) face looks like

CC-6454//PONDS: I’M TALKING HERE  
CC-6454//PONDS: then windu says “you can’t adopt a division of clones plo”

CC-1004//GREE: hold up

CC-6454//PONDS: and koon’s like, technically they’re not adopted :) just my legal inheritors which automatically grants them kel dorian and thus republic citizenship after a period of residency on my home planet :))))))

CC-1004//GREE: hold the FUCK UP

CT-7567//REX: THEY CAN DO THAT??

CC-6454//PONDS: AND WINDU YELLS “YOU DON’T OWN SHIT PLO”  
CC-6454//PONDS: and then i’m just trapped in the corner while they start shouting and windu keeps calling in other councilors to back him up and they’re all fighting with each other and then MASTER fucking YODA drops out of the ceiling and says “dumb as shit, this is” and SIGNS THE KRIFFING PAPERWORK

CC-2224//CODY: there is literally no way any of this happened  
CC-2224//CODY: but especially the yoda part

CC-6454//PONDS: cc6454p_00095.mp4

CC-3201//MONNK: this is just blurry cam of something green and you screaming for no reason

CC-6454//PONDS: HE DROPPED OUT OF THE CEILING, WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME

CC-3636//WOLFFE: not making shit up would be a start  
CC-3636//WOLFFE: cut it out. it’s not funny

CC-6454//PONDS: I’M NOT LYING YOU MASSIVE DRINK-OWING DICK!!!!!!

CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: did the chancellor actually sign it

CC-6454//PONDS: WHAT THE KARK DID I JUST SAY  
CC-6454//PONDS: reading comprehension in this chat is seriously the worst

CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: i am dead fucking serious ponds  
CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: did the p have a little swirly flag on it

CC-6454//PONDS: uh  
CC-6454//PONDS: yeah, i think so

CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: was there a raised seal of the republic over it

CC-6454//PONDS: yes??

CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: and yoda signed it too  
CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: with council witnesses

CC-6454//PONDS: for fuck’s sake, YES

CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: send me a still of the page from your HUD feed

CC-6454//PONDS: cc6454p_00096.jpg  
CC-6454//PONDS: cc6454p_00097.jpg  
CC-6454//PONDS: cc6454p_00098.jpg

CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: … well, vode  
CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: i have good news and bad news

CC-2224//CODY: are you shitting me right now

CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: the bad news is that you actually owe both wolffe and i drinks for life

CC-2224//CODY: are you SHITTING me right now

CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: because we just established a legal precedent of clones gaining citizenship through existing law

CC-1004//GREE: buir’s hairy fucking BALLS

CT-7567//REX: WHAT THE KARK

CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: which means kamino has to mount any challenge through the courts, not the senate  
CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: and we have a much better chance of winning our case there  
CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: all because i’ve suffered through so much senate paperwork i know exactly how to file things to get them to sign off without looking

CC-1004//GREE: oh little gods  
CC-1004//GREE: oh sweet merciful Force

CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: and because wolffe is daddy’s little girl

CC-6454//PONDS:  **@wolffe** YOU SHABUIR I LOVE YOU

CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: hey, i want some recognition of my skills here

CC-6454//PONDS: FUCK OFF FOX  
CC-6454//PONDS: FILING IS NOT A SKILL

CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: first of all, it absolutely fucking is 

CC-2224//CODY:  **@wolffe** congrats, vod  
CC-2224//CODY: that’s karking amazing  
CC-2224//CODY: and thanks i guess  **@admin** for being a sneaky little sheb

CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: THANK you

CC-5052//BLY:  **@wolffe** buddy you okay  
CC-5052//BLY: you’re being kind of quiet

CC-1004//GREE:  **@wolffe** ?

CT-7567//REX:  **@wolffe** ????

CC-3636//WOLFFE: i jsut loveihm so MUCHHCH  
CC-3636//WOLFFE: GNEERAL KONN I LVOYUO

CC-6454//PONDS: oh shit he’s stroking out

CC-3201//MONNK: isn’t everything on kel dor poisonous to humans or something

CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: count that as part of the bad news  
CC-1010//FOX//ADMIN: you already spend most of your time wearing an oxygen tank, don’t worry about it


	17. 17. Shot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yoda taps his gimmerstick lightly on the ground, claws folded over the head. The threat is clear. “ _Brief_ moment of our time, the medical wing has asked for.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-specific tags: crack crack crack, jedi healers do not practice patient privacy or hippocratic oaths

A certain chilliness lingers in the air of the High Council chambers the next day, Masters Windu and Koon studiously examining the views from the tower windows in opposite directions as the other members trickle in. 

Obi-Wan watches them sidelong as he waits for the room to fill, alert to any signs they might rekindle their argument; when he’d planned his briefing schedule for the precious little time they all had left on-planet, he hadn’t envisioned an entire afternoon being derailed by _adoptions_ , of all things. He’s happy Plo has found a successful outlet for his growing concern for his men, truly, but equally glad Master Yoda had preempted a full Council deliberation on the topic. He can’t in good conscience join a vote on anything clone related, not with his own… _connection_ of dubious legal standing, but recusing himself would have raised all kinds of questions he doesn’t have answers to, not even for himself. He hadn’t looked forward to making the choice.

Stass appears in the doorway, bleary-eyed but immaculately dressed, and Obi-Wan has barely let her settle into a chair with a yawn before he says, “Are we a quorum, then?”

Mace looks away from the transparisteel, giving the room a quick once-over. “It appears so.”

“Excellent,” Obi-Wan says, moving to stand. “Picking up from yesterday’s discussion, then—”

“A moment, Master Kenobi,” Yoda says from across the circle of seats, wrinkled face serene and subtly amused. “A small thing to address, before start we must.”

“Ah. Yes?” Obi-Wan says, already half out of his chair. At this rate, he’s going to have to cut some of the simulations from his presentation, which would defeat the entire purpose. “Pardon me, but will it take long? Perhaps we could save it for—”

Yoda taps his gimmerstick lightly on the ground, claws folded over the head. The threat is clear. “ _Brief_ moment of our time, the medical wing has asked for.”

“Medical?” Kit asks with the beginnings of a scowl, and the door to the chamber opens to reveal Master Che and two healer padawans with trays of syringes.

Obi-Wan isn’t the only master who cringes back into his chair, but his retreat is the most obvious. Che’s cold gaze alights on him and stays, her lips thinning in disapproval.

“Good morning, masters,” she says, sweeping inside. The padawans tiptoe in after her, eyes wide and necks craning to better take in the chamber and its occupants. “I promise not to take too much of your time today. It simply seemed most expedient to come to you, when multiple unanswered messages suggest you are all _far_ too busy to come to me.”

“War will do that,” Kit mutters, but wilts when she turns her stern gaze on him.

“Oh, of course. As we all know, war completely obviates the need for scheduled immunizations, boosters, and new vaccines,” she says cuttingly. “Far be it from your healer to attempt to preserve you from illness and death when the fate of the Republic is at stake. I’d ask if you’d like to go first, Master Fisto, but I did us both a favor and completed your panels while you were unconscious.”

Kit’s hand goes to his arm and he looks simultaneously relieved and disturbed, headlimbs flaring out. “I thought it was a bacta-rash! Outrageous, Master Che!”

Che sniffs. “Outrageous that we had to wait until you were incapacitated, certainly. Master Kenobi?”

Obi-Wan jumps, and belatedly says, “Ah, yes?” as she begins to roll up her sleeves. He has a rather bad feeling about where that steely tone is leading. 

“As our second most delinquent council member, perhaps you’d like to go first?”

Obi-Wan glances around the chamber for— succor, maybe, or at least moral support. But Ki-Adi only blinks back in total bemusement, Stass has sunk down in her seat like it might grant her the mercy of swallowing her whole, and Luminara is a paler green than he’s ever seen her. Even Mace has a compressed expression that suggests displeasure of some kind. Perhaps constipation. 

“Do I have a choice?” he asks, and Che gives him a dire smile.

“Between consenting to routine immunizations here, or being darted like an animal in the hallways?” she says. “Of course. Though I must tell you, Knight Skywalker does not seem to enjoy the latter option.”

“Is that how you do that,” Obi-Wan murmurs. Anakin has not voluntarily submitted to medical care since the tender age of thirteen, and his continued good health despite that had until this moment seemed almost miraculous.

“Also known to arm padawans with auto-injectors, Master Che has been,” Yoda says placidly. “Better to do as she says, it seems, hmm?”

Yoda could afford to be perfectly sanguine about the situation; Obi-Wan doubted there was a single healing professional in the galaxy who knew what illnesses and agues affected… Yodas, let alone how to concoct vaccines for them. 

“This— won’t cause any problems for deployment, will it?” he asks as she advances on him, brandishing a bacta swab and a needle easily the length of his hand. “I’ll be able to leave as scheduled?”

“Side effects are expected to be mild,” she says, which is so very far from a no. “Robe and obi off, please.”

Obi-Wan clutches at his lapels quite unconsciously. “What, right here?”

“That or your trousers,” she says, looming. “I have no preference, Master Kenobi. Take your pick.”

Behind her, Stass is out of her seat and edging towards the doorway. 

“Padawans,” Che says without turning, and one of her trainees unslings a long-barreled projectile weapon from their shoulder and takes aim.

* * *

“ _Karking—”_

“Keep your voice down,” Commander Tano hisses, like she hasn’t just flickered into being like a holo to yank Rex into the dark crevice behind a row of cargo containers. “Did anyone see us?”

“Sorry, I didn’t realize this was a _secret_ ambush,” he says, but she just cocks her head, eyes going distant for a moment. She has a hand on his arm and the other slapped over his helmet where his mouth would be.

“Okay, we’re clear,” she says, and grabs his wrist. “Take these.”

She forces a small collection of vials into his glove, topped with some kind of quick delivery system, clear fluid visible inside. “And… what am I supposed to do with them?” Rex asks, HUD zeroing in on the labels. 

“Pointy end goes in the general,” she says, prodding one. “Somewhere fleshy, Master Che said. I’d do it myself, but I think he already suspects something— he’s been twitching away from me all day.”

He stares at her. “You want me to—? What, all of them? At once? _Somewhere fleshy?_ ”

She shrugs. “If you think you can get Master Skywalker to stand still while you do them one at a time, be my guest. Just do it before we launch tomorrow, I don’t need Master Che mad at me and with our luck he’ll catch something the moment we leave orbit.”

“Commander—” 

“Thanks, captain!”

_“Commander—!”_

But she’s already slipping away out the other side of their hiding place, and disappears into the general bustle of the dock without a backwards glance.

“Oh, kark me sideways,” Rex mutters, and stows them in his chest plate.


End file.
